meyes lemon tree

forgive me if this has been discussed before but I scanned previous entries and found nothing. Anyway, here is my issue. I bought a meyer's lemon tree this year because I heard they were easy to grow and I wanted to try it out. But, how do I know when the fruit are ready? Do they turn yellow? Or am I looking for a certain size? Smell? Feel??? I tried looking in Howard's books and found nothing. Please help! Thanks in advance.

[culdeus]

I think actual conventional wisdom on lemon/lime trees is to self abort the first couple of fruits to give the plant a little more vigor. If you've made it far enough to think about when to actually pick the things I usually wait until they just start turning yellow, they do sort of feel more "felty" than "leathery" if that makes any sense.

[regferk]

We bought what was labled a myers lemon and were wondering the same things. We finally couldn't stand it and picked a lemon (just last week) that had been on the tree at about the same size since early spring (March?). What we found out is that we had bought a lime tree and not a lemon tree at all. Good news is that it was a WONDERFUL lime, so we can't be too disappointed, but we will be excited to try a real lemon tree next year. Do lemons start out green and turn yellow, or are they yellow from the beginning? I want to be able to make sure that the next one really is a lemon.

thank you very much for your replies. A lime tree? Wow, well, maybe I should check one out to verify what we have. A lime tree wouldn't be so bad but lemon is what I'm looking for. Thanks again.