When we first moved down here, Doug and I bought a lemon tree at the plant sale at Kanapaha Botanical Garden. We were both excited, but I was probably more so since I would now be able to grow my own lemons to make lemonade just like Granny did years ago. I even found her recipe and couldn't wait to try it. We watered the tree, fertilized it and found the best spot in the yard for it to get both shade and sun. After that, we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Fast forward almost two years later and we are still waiting for our first lemon. The tree has blossomed, but so far it has produced no fruit.
On the flip side, the lime tree that we bought this past October already had several limes growing and one that will be ready to pick next week. With that being the case, I decided to search Google to see what the problem could be. One thought was that the lemon tree wasn't pollinating itself. That usually only occurred when the tree was indoors, but it was flowering without any issue, so maybe the internet was right. Since it was very easy to pollinate a tree, all I had to do was rub pollen from one flower to the other with a Q-tip, I decided to try that first.
While I was pollinating the tree, I realized that there were snails crawling all over the area close to where the lemon tree was. I didn't know how the snails had gotten into our backyard and was sure that they were harmless but thought that I would check Google about those as well. As soon as I clicked on a website about snails in the garden, a lightbulb went off. Snails loved lemon trees and tomatoes and caused damage to both. It made sense to me since the two plants that were suffering the most were the lemon tree and tomato plant. I looked through all of the remedies and finally decided to buy slug and snail bait from Lowe's. I spent an hour this morning putting it down all around the border of our fence and back porch. I don't know if it will work or help our lemon tree grow lemons, but my fingers are crossed. Either way, it was a lot easier than picking all of the snails out of the yard like I tried in the first place.