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Lemons
Jersey grower, Joe Freire has found a niche crop to cultivate, helping to satisfy local demand for lemons. These find their way to farm shops and to restaurants where they make the ideal accompaniment to seafood, an ice-cold glass of gin and tonic or as an ingredient for desserts. The zest can also be used in cakes.
Jersey Association chairman, Graeme Le Marquand recently took the opportunity to see the crop for himself and to learn about its cultivation.
Mr Freire came from Madeira to work
in Jersey in 1982 and was delighted to discover a climate with a variety of weather that comes from having four distinct
seasons in one year. He worked on farms and eventually started up his own business, producing strawberries, raspberries and asparagus as well as flowers.
The lemons are one of his latest ventures and are now in their second year of production. Mr Freire gained some initial tips from farmers in Portugal including the fact that the most important thing was to keep them out of the wind. With this in mind, he grows them in a ‘French cloche’ – a type of tunnel to protect them from the elements. There are five of these cloches in total on his holding with around 20 trees in each.
The trees have also been planted in a row so that they can be trimmed like grape vines
Joe Freire
rather than leaving them bush out. They are watered with drip irrigation.
The variety Mr Freire grows, produces slightly longer-shaped lemons than those usually seen in supermarkets and he has found Islanders seem very happy with them. He explains that apart from all the usual uses, the lemons are also perfect for tea. ‘You just take the skin from the lemon, leaving the white behind and put it in hot water. It makes a wonderful tea,’ he added.
Picking began the first week of December and Mr Freire expects that he will harvest around 1,400 kilos this year.
A good crop
Trained like grape vines
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