Perhaps you grow a lemon tree in a pot in your French garden
– I certainly do. It was one of the horticultural novelties of moving to
France.
To pick a lemon from your own tree and slice it into a cold
drink is a luxury of life in warmer climes and if you give your pot the correct
care and shelter in colder weather your lemon tree will thrive.
But did you know there is a lemon indigenous to France,
which is commercially cultivated in open ground and which flowers and fruits
(at the same time) all year round?
The charm of sweet Menton lemons
This is the Menton lemon – named after the town on the Côte
d'Azur, where an annual lemon festival is held each February/March.
The Menton lemon is sweeter and less acidic than the
traditional citron and is perfect
for cooking. The sweetness and its richness in essential oils also give this
lemon the ability to resist frost to a greater degree than others and it has
excellent keeping qualities.
It can be grown successfully on the Côte d'Azur because of
the local micro-climate, which usually protects it from frost – so it is not a
variety you should attempt to plant directly into your garden or orchard
elsewhere on mainland France.
The Menton lemon is also a prolific fruiter – you can get up
to 15 lemons per branch - many more than with other varieties.
Local Menton lemonsSvetlanaSF/Shutterstock
This versatile little fruit was popular for centuries with
up to 80,000 trees flanking the hillsides around Menton, but agricultural production declined late in the 19th
Century as the local population became more
involved in servicing a growing tourist industry, and the variety was almost
lost.
A severe frost in 1956 sounded a potential death knell for
the fruit, but, in about 1980, a small group of farmers in the Menton area
started to replant it, saving the French lemon industry.
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In 2004, l’Association pour la Promotion du Citron du Menton
(APCM) was established and in 2015 the fruit became recognised officially by
the EU as having an Indication
Geographique Protegée or IGP status. It is the only French lemon to
achieve this recognition, which requires the lemons to be grown in only five
designated communes within the Alpes-Maritimes department.
The trees must also be grown within 7km of the sea and at
less than 390m above sea level.
Industrialised production is impossible because
the land around Menton is mountainous and the steep hillsides mean that the
work of cultivation and harvesting has to be done by hand.
Despite this,
production has flourished and the Menton lemon has become something of a
celebrity, capitalising both on its potential as a tourist attraction and its
contribution to French culinary traditions.
Since 1934, the Fête du Citron in Menton has been an annual
event – celebrating the fruit for a three week period from late February into
March. The town is flooded with lemons – in the form of sculptures, fabulous
floats, parades, exhibitions and general lemon-related festivities.
About
200,000 visitors are welcomed into Menton as the vibrant displays shake off the
strictures of winter and welcome spring with a sea of yellow.
Over 3,000 hours
are spent creating amazing monuments to the lemon, with decorations using up
to 140 tons of fruit.
This year is the 91st anniversary of the festival, held between February 15 and March 2 with a theme of: Journey
to the Stars.
Menton goes lemon-mad every springhaak78 / Shutterstock
Growing lemons throughout the rest of France is, of course,
very different. The best varieties to choose from are the Eureka, dwarf Eureka
and Lisbon lemons.
They are a little fussy about their requirements and respond
best to being planted in citrus-specific compost or, failing that, an
ericaceous one.
In early spring scrape off the top few centimetres of the
soil in the plant’s existing pot and top dress with fresh compost – or re-pot
one size up if necessary.
Then increase watering and feeding, using a citrus-specific
fertilizer and continue to feed the plant all year.
Lemons need lots of water in summer, but they do not like to
sit in it. In winter, they should only be watered sparsely.
Keep the lemon
tree in a sunny spot and you should have flowers and fruit all year round, just
like the Menton lemon.
