Grow

Tahiti lime in the yard

The lime in the grocery bag is a Tahiti, also called Persian. Citrus Culture in the Home Landscape files it under acid fruits and says fruit can be picked any time of year from a bearing tree. It is also more cold-tender than a sweet orange, which is the whole problem in January.

The 'Tahiti' Persian lime and 'West Indian' (Key or Mexican) lime make a satisfactory acid fruit for the home since fruit can be picked any time of the year.

Persian is the grocery lime

The home-landscape citrus guide's Table 1 puts Persian lime at zero to one seed with a June through September note, and flags it for postbloom fruit drop. Key lime is listed everbearing, three to eight seeds, and cold sensitive, with scab, anthracnose, and aphids against it. They are different fruit. The bag in the produce aisle is almost always Tahiti. Ask the nursery which one is on the tag before you pay for it.

Cold is the limiter

Everything the home-landscape citrus guide says about citrus culture still applies to a lime. Full sun beats light shade for fruit. Home spacing is a minimum of 15 feet between trees. Keep the tree away from septic tanks and drain fields. Weeds and sod come out from under the canopy and especially off the trunk, because weeds against the bark invite foot rot. Mulch is not recommended around citrus, and if the tree sits in a mulched bed the mulch stays at least a foot from the trunk.

Where a lime differs is the freeze paragraph. The home-landscape citrus guide says frequency of freezing temperatures should drive the choice in historically cold areas, and that where freezes are expected every few years the more cold-tender types should be avoided and only the hardiest chosen. A Tahiti lime is on the tender side of that sentence. If your lot has a history of hard nights, the paper's answer is a different fruit, or a pot.

How to plant

1. Buy a container-grown tree. The home-landscape citrus guide says those can be planted in any month and are more likely to live and thrive.
2. Set it at the same soil line it had in the container, in full sun. Pull some soil off the root mass so outer roots meet the sand instead of sitting in a block of potting mix.
3. Build a basin that holds five to ten gallons. Run a hose into it ten to fifteen minutes twice a week for the first month, then again whenever new growth wilts in mid-afternoon.
4. Start fertilizer when buds swell, or three weeks after planting, and repeat about every six weeks from February through October in the first year.

The home-landscape citrus guide calls an 8-8-8 with other macro and micronutrients a good general citrus fertilizer. The closest thing on the shop shelf is a 5-2-6 citrus food with micronutrients. Get this. Keep it off the trunk, and spread it over the basin area in the first year.

A pot you can move

Of the fruit on this site, a tender lime is the best case for a container. The home-landscape citrus guide lets a container-grown tree go in the ground any month, and the same tree left in a pot is one you can roll into a garage when a hard night is forecast. Use a pot with real drainage holes and one you can actually tip onto a dolly when it is full of wet soil. Do not trust a dwarf claim that is not printed on the nursery tag.

For a tree in the ground the home tool is cloth, not a promise. A lightweight row cover is what gets thrown over a young tree on a freeze night. Get this. Anchor the edges so wind does not lift it off. The home-landscape citrus guide does not publish a date that holds every winter, and neither does this page.

Pests

The home-landscape citrus guide says most citrus in a landscape can be grown without chemical pesticides, that blemished peel usually means nothing about the fruit inside, and that many citrus pests sit under natural biological control. Pest control should be undertaken only as the need becomes evident. When it is, the paper names horticultural oil for insects, mites, and scales, and copper fungicides for most fungal diseases, and sends spray work to a licensed applicator. Persian lime's named problem in Table 1 is postbloom fruit drop, which takes young fruit after bloom rather than killing the tree. UF/IFAS Home Citrus is blunt that canker and citrus greening have cut into residential citrus across the state, and its Master Gardener project spent two years from June 2022 testing individual protective covers, reflective ground cover, red dyed kaolin, and sprays on home trees.

When to pick

A lime is picked green. The home-landscape citrus guide's reason for recommending it to homeowners is exactly that fruit can be taken any time of the year, so there is no single harvest week to wait for. Table 1's June through September note is the heavy band, not a gate. Pick when a fruit gives slightly and feels heavy for its size, and take fruit off a young tree rather than letting it hang. On a tall tree a pole with a basket saves the fruit you would otherwise shake loose. Get this.

In the kitchen, zest before you juice. A rasp zester takes the colored peel and leaves the bitter white layer. Get this. A dual-gear hand press gets more out of a lime than a fork will. Get this.

Questions

Sources

1. Citrus Culture in the Home Landscape (HS132), UF/IFAS
2. UF/IFAS Home Citrus, Citrus Research and Education Center

Yard limes versus the year-round box, or the shop for presses and cloth.