Ripe limes?

How do you tell when a lime is ripe?

One of these, maybe? :-)

http://www.raintreenursery.com/catalog/productdetails.cfm?ProductID=T215

Oh, let me jump right on that one! Yeeks!

ROTFL at the $110 refractometer!

I have a key lime tree, and I discovered that if I wait until the fruit starts turning a little yellow and drops into your hand at a touch (or flings itself onto the floor), it has a much better flavor. Same with my Meyer lemon, if I can stand to wait until the fruit comes off very easily and is slightly yielding, it has a better flavor and is far less sour.

Oh, gotta run critterologist, I think I hear my bearss limes flinging themselves onto my patio! Is it a suicide attempt or are they just having temper tantrums! LOL! You made my day! Thanks!

Hey, by the way, does your Meyer sometimes drop its fruit? Mine, I have only had it 2 years so it is young, started blooming, a lot of the very tiny lemons fell off, I will only get about 8 lemons to maturity on that crop, and then it started blooming again, and it dropped leaves like crazy and lots of new leaves started growing. Now it is blooming and is vigorously leafing out. It is almost as if it is trying to do too much at the same time and dropped the older leaves out of stress. What do you think?

Meyers, for me, drop leaves if I just look at them funny.

OK Would you please quit looking funny at my Meyer? Thanks!

My little Meyer lemon tree tries to produce a zillion fruits at once, and I pick most of them off when they are tiny, leaving one or two per branch. I know it would probably self-prune and drop most of them on its own, but I figure I don't want it spending any more energy than necessary on the effort. Besides, enough already with trees flinging their fruit around! :-)

If your tree is blooming and vigorously leafing out, I'd say you're doing something right! But even 8 lemons at a time seems like a lot to me if it's a little tree.

OK, I'll let it be. I just love lemonade and would prefer to use my own lemons. Sigh . . . . .