I Need a Greenhouse!

So I had my hot peppers on my enclosed front porch and I bought a thermostat to monitor how cold it got out there. It has dipped below 50˚F and the peppers are really showing that they are unhappy with this weather with droopy leaves and lots of leaf dropping and winter hasn't even hit yet! So I moved them into the actual house into my dining room as much as I was trying to keep plants out of there. I still have two Clivias and a Mandevallia out there. They seem to be holding up ok. I will probably move the clivias up to my third floor and find some space somewhere for the Mandevilla. Winter is so hard to do in this house. There are hardly any windows and if there are any, the window sills are so tiny! I keep trying to downsize, but I amit, I'm an addict :)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention....I was at Lowes a few days ago and they had the new and improved Meyer's Lemon on sale for....$3! What's so new and improved about this one? It is self pollinated! Unlike the one I have already, which needs a pollinator for me to get any lemons! I couldn't pass it up. $3!

Thanksgiving Cactus & Meyer Lemon Blooms

Meyer's Lemon

These are actually red, but the camera doesn't show it that well.

Meyer's Lemon

I got a Meyer's lemon a few years ago on sale. It almost died once. I threw it on the side of the house and told it that if it survives it gets to come back inside in the fall. I guess my pep talk worked :) It has given me one lemon a year. I guess that is all it can handle being that it is just a tiny tree. If you haven't tasted this lemon you HAVE to! It's technically a lemon x tangerine. Looks like a lemon, but once you taste it...oh my! It is sweeter than normal lemons, perfect for lemonade! You can totally eat this without making that face! I highly recommend it! They are easy to grow, tolerate abuse well too! They are thorny, which I did not realize when I first bought it, but there are so few spines that you can just cut them off, which is what I did. They are pretty long and jab pretty darn well!

Anyway...it blooms twice a year for me, spring and fall. This fall it is LOADED with flower buds! The first two buds opened today and oh do they smell heavenly! I have one full grown lemon on there right now that I am waiting for to ripen up. The spring bloom gave me another baby growing. Hopefully the bees are still out right now and I will be blessed with more! I may have to play bee here! I'll have to get a picture of it tomorrow.