Citrus, Lemon 'Eureka'

On Jul 30, 2006, jills from Alameda, CA (Zone 9b) wrote:

Ten years ago I planted a Eureka lemon between my house and the house next door. The neighbors are to the southwest and the houses are reallyclose, so my Eureka doesn't get nearly as much sun as it should (and pretty much none at all in the winter when the sun is low). But that sucker has survived several frosts (which killed the neighbor's Meyer's Improved lemon) and merciless pruning. Last year I painted the house and had to whack the poor Euraka back a LOT just to get access to paint. In fact, I decided that I would just remove it so my pruning was basically butchering. Before I was done I got tired of pruning (the thorns are nasty) and decided to just leave what was left and see what happened after I had removed about 2/3 of the tree (maybe more). But over the past year it grew a... read morend it grew and it's now back to being about 12' high and 10' wide and I've had to prune it again. I haven't watered it for over a year (we do have a high water table, but still!). Even with last week's 95-degree weather, it thrives without water. It produces lots of big lemons -- enough for us and for the neighbor kids to use for lemonade which they sell. It had that gall or whatever a few years ago, which produced weird-looking fruit that was kind of creepy. But it was just that one year, and the fruit has been fine since.

I've been looking at the Meyer postings, and people just rave about that one, so I wanted to give the Eureka some credit too! The blossoms also smell very nice.

On May 16, 2006, norfish from Modesto, CA wrote:

I have raised this tree in Palo Alto and Modesto California. The Palo Alto tree was at least 30 years old, about 12 feet high and bore year around. The Modesto tree was planted as a sapling and grew more slowly than its neighbors, a Washington Navel Orange and a Valencia Orange. It is now 20 years old, is about 10 feet tall, and is about 6 feet wide. If you don't strip it, it will also bare and blossom year round. It is crowded and would have done better with more space. Modesto has blistering hot summers and an occasional ground frost. I deep water all citrus trees summer and winter and have large, juicy fruit with beautiful skins. Eureka requires a min. of 10 feet of space to grow in - in order to get good sun, to allow for long term slow growth, and for space to navigate around to ... read moreavoid the wicked thorns. Eureka's fruit are all the size of softballs (and larger). I love the true lemony flavor of the abundant juice and the rind is fantastic in cooking and baking. I wouldn't waste my time, space and water on a puny Meyer lemon.