I have an 20+ year old meyer lemon in my california backyard. My plan before finding this forum was to graft some oranges, grapefruit, and mandarines onto the tree. Joe real's bark graft sounds like a good place to start on this old tree for most of the branches are fairly thick and aged.


By ygrippin at 2011-03-10

THE QUESTION: Will the fruit quality of the oranges, grapefruit, and mandarines be adversely affected by them being grafted onto the meyer lemon?

This old meyer lemon was a four winds tree on dwarf rootstock, I'm not sure what rootstock was used then or if the tree is an improved meyer lemon. But the meyer is interstock I guess its called.

I know that meyer is suppose to be a cross between a orange mandarin and a lemon how will this affect grafting oranges and mandarins on the tree. I read some posts by millet stating lemon rootstock gives poor tasting fruit, but I also followed Joe Real's bark grafting post and he was grafting different varieties on a lisbon lemon.

THE CORRECT QUESTION: Does anyone have a multi-grafted citrus on a lemon type rootstock and has tasted the fruit to see if the fruit quality is decent?

I am also very interested in this subject. I have a large Meyer lemon that has been seriously beaten down the past two years by freezes. I doubt I'll get any lemons this year either.

I would like to topwork it to several different varieties of satsuma/mandarin/tangerine.

i am grafting several different varieties onto a Meyer lemon, most of the other varieties are also sour and some of those have fruited and they have been fine the sweeter varieties have not yet fruited so i can not attest to the quality but i do believe there is a thread about Meyer seedling being used as rootstock that was producing fine fruit. you may want to use the search feature for that thread.

I have never grafted, nor budded any other variety of citrus onto a Meyer Lemon, so take my words with a grain of salt. Going along with gdbanks, I would not be to too concerned grafting/budding sour varieties (lemons, limes, grapefruit) onto a Meyer lemon. I would be somewhat cautious grafting/budding sweet citrus varieties on Meyer lemon. If I had a better root stock available I certainly would not use the Meyer, and instead use the better stock. It has long been known that grafting/budding sweet citrus varieties onto lemons deludes the flavor of the grafted/budded fruit. However, as Meyer lemons are only 1/2 lemon I would suspect that the delusion factor might be less. Then again it might not effect grafted sweet fruit at all. - Millet (693-)

Lemon Meyer as a rootstock cannot have any influence on taste grafted other citruses on it. Each citrus will repeat sweetness and other tastiness of the mother citrus where they have been taken from for grafting. Rootstock only changes vigorousity of the tree if it was dwarf or opposite.

matievski it has LONG been known that rootstocks can and do exert many effects on the scions that are grafted upon them, and taste is indeed one of the effects, for better or worse. - Millet (688-)

Cara cara on my Mexican lime was excellent no watered down flavor. But my v cara cara had an odd taste to it.

GRAFTING NAVAL ONTO MEYER ROOTSTOCK
I will try to graft washington naval or robinson naval onto my 20+ year old meyer this bark slipping season and I will post a taste report when I get fruit. It is difficult to say with the meyer only being 1/2 lemon what effect it will have on sweet citrus grafts.
JOE REAL if you ever read this post I would greatly appreciate your input on how the sweet oranges might be effected by the lemon rootstock. I think I read somewhere that your 81-n-1 tree was on a lisbon lemon rootstock, how did any of the sweet fruit off that tree taste?


By ygrippin at 2011-03-10

There is a big branch I will attempt to graft 3 large scions onto using Joe Real's bark grafting technique. If I had another rootstock I would take advantage of it but the meyer is a well established tree that could effective produce loads of naval oranges.

MEYER GRAFTING PROJECT GOAL
My goal for the project would be to continue bark grafting naval orange scions until I replaced half the meyer lemon canopy with navals. With no adverse flavors on the navals, a 12 foot wide canopy split down the middle with meyers on one side and navals on the other would be most excellent and aesthetically interesting.


By ygrippin at 2011-03-10

RIO RED GRAPEFRUIT - super crop for small tree
four winds nursery tree planted 2 years ago every year it produces a crop of 8-12 fruits, I keep thinking the branches are going to bust but they somehow manage the weight.


By ygrippin at 2011-03-10

HASS AVO BARK GRAFTING
As a side note I also have about 7 hass avocado bark grafts on large seed grown avo's that I am awaiting to take. I will have to post photos of the project and any results in the avocado area.

tags: meyer lemon rootstock, meyer lemon multi graft, lemon rootstock, sweet on sour rootstock. hass grafts, hass on seedling stock, grapefruit, rio red grapefruit

I want to clear something up. Most rootstocks are sour varieties and offer great sweet fruit quality. So I assume the idea of not grafting sweet on sour is in the case of interstock?

If so, how does the interstock practice of say sour orange and trifoliate work, but not a Meyer lemon, Libson lemon or lime?