Finally!
For the past three weeks, our Hand of Buddha, Citrus medica var. sarcodactylis, was covered in buds.
This morning, joyfully, four buds bloomed.
The hand of Buddha is a thorny small citron tree (usually less than 7 feet tall) originating from India. He bears amazing fingered fruits.
The fruit have thin skin and little to no flesh . In China and Japan, it was known to be used as a fragrance for the home or to freshen the laundry. In occidental countries, we use the zest for cooking.
The citrus family plants, especially lemon trees are prime candidates for indoor growing, perhaps the only fruits trees. They appreciate indoor climate and their fruits have many medicinal and flavouring properties. Within the lemon, everything can be useful, juice, rind and pulp.
Be aware! Spider mites love these plants and preventive treatments should be applied. My recommandation is neem oil twice a month. Indoor spider mites are no joking matter!
Within our indoor orchard, we also have a four seasons lemon tree, Citrus lemon, which produces simultaneously fruits, flowers and new growth and a Meyer lemon tree, Citrus meyeri, which is known for its sweetness.
Hand of Buddha plant has a reputation to be difficult for container cultivation.
We have had ours since October. Purchased in a soil container, we repotted it in a 15 year old WaterFarm from General Hydroponics. He aclimmated quite rapidly losing only a few leaves and within one month, he has signs of vigorous new growth and is covered with clusters of flower buds, at least one hundred. He is two feet tall.
Seeing how he is thriving, we are seriously considering repotting his cousins in such a system…
EC (EC aka electro-conductivity is the unit used to measure fertilizer concentration) is stable around 1.5, and pH (acidity unit) tends to drop, I maintain it around 5.
He is fed with General Hydroponics FloraSeries and E.M. aka Effective Micro Organisms.
Transplantation was epic, the root ball was very, very, very compact and I had to struggle at least for one hour to remove all the dirt damaging at least half of the roots.
During this process, I broke a stem that I chose to put in an aeroponics cloning nursery, the RainForest.
See below the result within three weeks:
The hand of Buddha variety is one of the only citrus that can be grown without being grafted.
I plan to root new cuttings soon… 🙂
Obviously, as you can see, I repotted it Hydro, in clay pellets. My life partner named her baby “Ohm”.
I hope to report soon news about fruit growth.
Stay tuned …
INDOOR VEGGIE GARDEN 
What a lovely blog. Congratulations. Wishing you much success with Cosmic Garden. Thank you for spreading the word on healthy gardening. Looking forward to more posts on hydroponics.
Reblogged this on Denver Art Matters and commented:
I’m sharing this new blog from my friends in France. Hugo is a well-known master garden designer experimenting and researching hydroponics – the process of growing plants in sand, gravel, or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil. It should be of great interest to Denver. The city has a legal and continuing passion for growing hydroponic weeds in warehouses. : )
Thank you so much for your kind comment.
Denver go hydro 🙂