The Popular Herb You Should Consider Planting Near Your Lemon Tree In The Garden

To produce big, juicy fruit, a lemon tree needs plenty of sunshine, water and occasional applications of citrus-oriented fertilizer. In fact, the absence of any of these three major requirements might be why that lemon tree is struggling in your garden. They also need to be relatively free from pests, as these can stress the tree and result in poor fruit production. Perhaps most importantly, the flowers that your lemon tree produces need to be pollinated by visiting insects such as bees so that they can fully develop into fruits. While you can control the amount of sun, water and nutrients your tree gets, growing a popular herb such as basil close to your lemon tree will help with controlling the pest populations and attracting plenty of pollinators. In fact, basil is one of the most fragrant herbs that will keep aphids and other pests off your citrus trees. 

Basil is a lovely aromatic herb that enjoys the same type of Mediterranean climate as a lemon tree. This means the two will flourish when grown together and basil will reward you by providing some additional benefits to your citrus tree that you might not have considered. You can either plant the basil in the soil near your tree or grow it in a large pot and place it close to your citrus tree so that your tree can benefit from its presence.

For starters, basil is strongly aromatic — which means that it's commonly used in the vegetable garden to repel certain pests such as aphids, who do not appreciate the pungent scent that basil exudes. As you probably know, lemon trees have their own scent, and this might be what attracts these sap suckers to feed on the tender new growth on your tree. As a result, aphids produce a sticky residue known as honeydew which, in turn, attracts ants. Plus, when the honeydew is deposited onto the leaves and stems, it commonly produces a black sooty mold that can lessen the amount of photosynthesis your tree receives and stop lemons from maturing and ripening. But if you grow basil near your lemon tree, the strong scent emitted by basil plants will confuse the aphids and this could help keep them away from your citrus tree.

Another benefit of growing basil near your lemon tree is that once it flowers, it will attract lots of useful pollinators such as bees and hover flies. While you want to harvest your basil leaves for culinary uses before the plant starts to flower, allowing the blooms to grow will benefit your lemon tree by pulling in those valuable pollinators that will end up also finding the sweetly scented flowers on your lemon tree and fertilize more of them so that they produce those lovely big, juicy fruits. Now that you understand the benefits of growing basil near your lemon tree, you'll be happy to know that growing basil from seeds is easy with our handy gardening guide.