Today I made my first glass of lemonade from this season’s lemon crop. The lemon chose itself by falling from the tree. This sometimes means it’s been infested by an insect but there wasn’t a mark on it and no worms inside. Just beautiful, clear, juicy flesh (and a few pips).
To make my lemonade I used my tried-and-true recipe:
- squeeze the juice of one lemon,
- add it to a tall glass with 2 tablespoons of sugar (I didn’t say it was a diet drink!),
- stir like crazy,
- add water and ice and stir a bunch more.
You can add more water to dilute it (but if you’ve got a tree full of the things, that makes no sense) and you can get away with less sugar (if you don’t mind puckering a bit) but Frank and I love it just the way I make it. It’s a regular summer drink for us. Frank (and sometimes me too) cleans up the leftovers by sprinkling sugar into the emptied lemon halves and scooping out the remaining flesh of the lemon for a tasty, fresh snack.
The lemon tree isn’t exactly heavy with fruit (like the mandarin tree was) but it’s got a nice, healthy crop and I’m sure I’ll get a steady harvest over the coming months.
The gardening I did that earned me my lemonade today included some new seedling trays. The egg carton trick didn’t work very well (see my post about it here). I had some seedings but they didn’t grow well. I moved those seedlings to the new seed trays plus added some tomato, eggplant, capsicum and zucchini seeds. These trays are sitting where the egg cartons were, in the house. They may go outside at any time since I don’t think it will make much difference one way or the other (it gets warmer in the house during the day but the night-time temp is the same).
Laura Rittenhouse's Gardening Journal 
wow Laura – I think your lemon tree looks wonderfully healthy and full of lemons 🙂 I like a little of the zest grated into my lemonade as well! Are those clivia in the back against the fence? I would love to try to grow clivia but not sure they will survive up here and it could be an expensive experiment. Your garden is looking lovely.
I might try your idea about adding zest to my lemonade. I sure have enough of it.
Yep, those are clivia. One of the bunches will have to move as we’re getting 3 chickens and their run will go up to this fence (surrounding the orange tree – not sure what the result there will be). Apparently clivia is dangerous to chooks. I might try putting a small clump in a pot and bringing it indoors (not that I need more indoor plants). Most of it I’ll relocate to another shady spot. It’s always healthy and green looking and then those magnificient flowers appear and wow!