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Hello
I want to thank everyone who gave me suggestions on where we might find lemons in Costa Rica.
I’m pleased to let you know my search is over…a friend of mine has a 200 hectare ranch outside of Turrialba at a high altitude and she delivered 5 lbs of lemons to me…yes the real thing.
She has a couple of very mature trees that are loaded with them.
So it puts to rest the myth that lemons are not/ or cannot be grown here.
Thanks again everyone.
MichaelWe have a few lemon trees on our farm outside of San Isidro at about 2400 feet elevation. They are very strange looking –very lumpy on the outside but they made great lemonade. The trees are not nearly as big or as productive as the orange trees on our farm. Maybe the lemons do not grow as well or at all at lower elevations. I am bringing seeds of key limes (the kind used to make Key Lime pie) from Florida in a few days. Key limes are more tropical in nature since they originate from Key West. I will try to germinate them at the farm. I have tried this before but the seeds did not sprout. I think these seeds are short lived and so this time I collected and dried them only about a week ago. We have a couple of small key lime trees from our next door neighbor’s key lime trees that we started from seeds last year so I know the seeds were viable at some point. I saw many native trees the locals called “limon” when we were looking for a farm to buy 4 years ago. Elevations were from about 800 feet to about 6500 feet. This fruit was green on the outside and it smelled like a lime but it was yellow on the inside and had a flavor somewhere between a lemon and a lime. The trees were very productive and they had big thorns – typical of non-grafted citrus trees. So if anyone says that lemons don’t grow in Costa Rica except maybe at the beach, it is just not true.
The criollo lemons are not the same as key limes. The criollos are the “limons” to which I was referring in my previous post. And, yes, they grow all over Costa Rica. They are technically a green lemon (green outside, yellow inside) but I think they have a flavor that is between a lemon and a lime. Key lime is a true lime, Citrus aurantifolia. They are green on the outside and a light green on the inside. They are smaller than the “limons” prevalent in Costa Rica and their flavor is definately lime with no lemon undertones. There is also the bumpy lemon that we have on Earth Rose Farm. It is about the size and shape of a Meyer lemon but the skin is very bumpy. Its flavor is all lemon. In the absence of the seasonal lemons or limes, there is also the ubiquitous mandarina acidica or sour mandarina. These trees are all over our farm and there is fruit present on the trees almost all year. It is a thorny tree and it will grow true from seed. If you ask for limon in a restaurant for tea, or fish or to use as a very low calorie salad dressing, this is most likely what you will be given. The sour mandarina also makes great madarina-ade (a little goes a long way) if you use lots of sugar. This is a popular beverage on our farm. Rosie
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