After our third tree in so many years, we’ve finally gotten an indoor lemon tree to bear fruit. From bloom to ripe citrus, this solitary harvest took seven months of patient tending. What to do when you only have one? We have it in mind to slice it up paper thin and make this.
Constant harvesting helps to keep the beetles out of the asparagus patch. With overnight temperatures hovering in the low 30’s, we’re picking especially hard this week. These were slathered with good olive oil and roasted up all in one batch, and, finished with a scattering of sea salt, made for the simplest of feasts.
We can’t say we weren’t forewarned. Much as we like the ease of a perennial edible that stores in-ground, it can’t be understated how quickly last season’s foray into sunchokes have spread beyond their original planting. We hadn’t the chance to dig up some up until now; as it turns out, overwintering helps to convert the inulin into fructose, making them more digestible. Peeled, cubed and panfried until caramelized, these were a delicious accompaniment to the platter of asparagus.
Resources
• Growing Citrus Indoors: 5 Helpful Tips, Apartment Therapy
• The Truth About Indoor Citrus Trees, Gardenista
• How to Prune a Lemon Tree, wikiHow
Diary of a Tomato 
That is a serious feat! What a gorgeous lemon. Nicely done!
Thanks, it’s only one but worth the effort to know that we can grow them at all!
Love your lemon – did you have to keep it in a warm spot? Asparagus is always delicious, and I thank you for the chuckle on sunchokes. We started with one plant and you can for sure imagine how many we have now.
We keep the lemon tree indoors in a sunny spot during winter, and trundle it out for summer vacation. As for the sunchokes, we started with three last year, and they promptly became at least a hundred!
Hopefully your future holds lots more lemons! I love to prepare asparagus exactly as you described…. a simple treatment that allows the goodness of the vegetable to shine.
We’re deflinitely hoping for another round of fertilized blossoms!
I dig and give away lots of sunchokes each spring.
How great to get a lemon on your tree.
The gift that keeps on giving ;)
Congratulations, Mama Lemon! My citrus (calamondin orange) is still without fruit or blossoms after I used a new fertilizer it didn’t like, sad face indeed, since that’s my source for a lovely marmalade. Your aspargus looks gorgeous! I’m hoping someone here has a few sunchokes ( my father always called them Jerusalem artichokes) they want to get rid of – love them roasted or baked with a chicken or fish.
Thanks, Katrina, am feeling quite proud!
Wow. Now I’ve seen three different looking sunchokes. I wonder what they’d look like here. I gave up growing them because I have enough gas all my own. LOL – and yet I grow Yacon… Ah well win some, lose some! :-D
I read somewhere that there are over 200 varieties of sunchokes. I hate to give this one up, it seems less knobby than others, but the Gardener insists on digging it up, its too invasive… Yacon, how very cool!
Congrats on your lemon, I gave up growing citrus last year, hate moving them in and out of the house every winter and spring.
I don’t mind moving them, the scent of the blossoms indoors during winter makes it worth it!
Beautiful asparagus! And everything else! But I especially like the purple colors.
Thanks! The purple asparagus turn green when cooked, but they do seem to be a more stout variety.
Congratulations on your lemon. Good to know that overwintering helps to convert the inulin in sunchoke into fructose, making them more digestible. I am so envious of your lovely asparagus.
It’s just a hunch, but letting the sunchokes store in-ground at least a little a bit may help! For its size, our asparagus bed isn’t as productive as it should be though at least enough for our small family of two.
Beautiful purple asparagus! Congratulations on the lemon. I bought a Meyer lemon last year and got 5 lemons. This spring the tree started flowering while still too cold to put it outside. I wasn’t sure of pollination but it looks like three lemons took.
Thanks! For some reason the purple variety is more vigorous than the green. And congratulations on your three baby lemons! We haven’t moved ours outside yet, and hope we’re able to get some pollination when we do.
Congrats on your lemon! I love to make pizza with lemon, but I also add caramelized onion and smoked trout. That pizza is always a big hit when I serve it. Another lemony treat that I like is to slice it really thin and roll it up with some good toscano salami and arugula with a drizzle of olive oil, which also happens to make a fabulous sandwich filling, but I’m off bread these days…
Great combinations for using our lemon, they both sound delicious, thanks!
Sunchokes… hmmm, have to look this up as this is new to me… and 7 months for that lemon to mature… woooh…
I know, it took so long to turn from green to yellow that I though it was maybe a lime tree instead…