sunfish

sunfish

harveyc

How did it taste?

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harveyc

Was it stinky?

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sunfish

Taste great smelt pretty good pretty much seedless

harveyc

Guava plant, 6' plus. FREE! wish it were 60 miles closer...

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iz

Banana Gallery - Guava
Guava is a great container plant. Right at spring, they start blooming lots of flowers. In the mid summer, you get lots of baby fruit(i have the large sweet white fruit kind). Even when eaten unripe, they are already sweet and crunchy, just like the honeycrisp apple. You can wait until they are soft and ripe, but I like them sweet and crunchy. Best if grafted so you dont have to wait several years to have fruit. My first air layer this year was successful..keep the dirt moist on branch and it will start to root in the wounded branch. You can do root propagation too. It worked will too on mine.

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iz

lkailburn

I'm joining the ranks of guava owners. I just picked up a ruby supreme guava from the local nursery. It's about 3.5-4' tall. That's a dwarf lisbon lemon next to it. Got them in the tub ready for a good rinse after getting them home from the nursery. The guava looks very healthy, and is pushing new growth everywhere! Any specific care tips are welcome, i'm going to treat it as i do other tropicals, mix up a pretty quick draining soil with decent amount of vermiculite and perlite, keep the soil moist never soggy, and fert with some citrus fertalizer whenever i get around to it, maybe once a month at most frequent.


Thanks

-Luke

Richard

Luke, that sounds like a great plan. True guavas do very well with citrus food.

The Ruby guava is good tasting and a hardy plant. Typically the wholesale nurseries grow them from seed, selling some of the stock as plants and using the other portion for rootstock of more finicky varieties.

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sunfish

[quote=lkailburn;186080]I'm joining the ranks of guava owners. I just picked up a ruby supreme guava from the local nursery. It's about 3.5-4' tall. That's a dwarf lisbon lemon next to it. Got them in the tub ready for a good rinse after getting them home from the nursery. The guava looks very healthy, and is pushing new growth everywhere! Any specific care tips are welcome, i'm going to treat it as i do other tropicals, mix up a pretty quick draining soil with decent amount of vermiculite and perlite, keep the soil moist never soggy, and fert with some citrus fertalizer whenever i get around to it, maybe once a month at most frequent.


Thanks


That size plant may fruit this year

venturabananas

I've concluded that my favorite guava is lemon guava (Psidium littorale), followed by strawberry guava (another cultivar of Psidium littorale), followed by feijoa (at least good ones), with all the different tropical guavas (Psidium guajava) cultivars that I've tried bringing up the rear (though I love tropical guava juice and jam). The tropical ones I've tried don't have enough acidity to balance the flavor for my tastes. That's fortunate, because the tropical ones have fungus problems in my yard, which the Cattley varieties and feijoa don't have.

The size and quality of the fruit on my strawberry guava is highly variable. At their best, they are nearly golf-ball size and taste fantastic. At their worst, they are almost pea size and are sour and taste like turpentine. My lemon guava is more consistent and has much less of the sour and resinous flavors. Unfortunately, the birds prefer them, too, and they often get them before I can.

I sampled several different varieties of feijoa at a botanic garden and was surprised at how much they varied. Some were awful. Most were good to very good. Convinced me that a grafted, named variety is the way to go for me.

Have any of you propagated Cattley guavas from cuttings? I'm a novice at propagation. I tried it from green suckers and it failed. Do you need to use older wood?

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sunfish

Neighbors guava tree.

sunfish

Richard

The lemon guava is very good. It turns out that "Psidium littorale" is just a synonym for Psidium cattleianum var. littorale and among Myrteae researchers is referred to as "yellow Cattley guava" and often by CRFG members as "yellow strawberry guava".

The red strawberry guava is the more common phenotype of Psidium cattleianum. Myrteae researchers refer to it as "Cattley guava".

"Feijoa" is the common name in tropical Asia for the species Acca sellowiana which some Europeans and North Americans refer to as "Pineapple Guava".

Use semi-ripe cuttings in a mist bed and keep the media temperature in the high 70's.

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lkailburn

Thanks Richard.

Tony that was going to be my next question, what is the flowering/fruting schedule for this type of guava in its normal habitat.

Here's some of the leaf growth


Then there are these two growth shoots that are noticably different. Future flowers???


-Luke

sunfish

Here in San Diego mine starts to flower in May

venturabananas

Luke, the tropical guavas in my neighborhood have extended flowering and fruiting seasons that last for months. For example, my neighbor's has every stage from unopened flower buds through ripe fruit on it right now.

And yes, those are flower buds on your plant. Congrats.

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Richard

Luke,

Those pictures are of Psidium guajava, which as a species goes by the common name of "Tropical Guava" or simply guava. The native habitat of this species is roughly central Mexico down through central South America -- essentially between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, although there is native habitat in intracoastal areas of the Atlantic as far south as Uruguay. It was not introduced to the eastern hemisphere until 1526 when a galleon full of seeds and plants made port in Manila.

In the native habitat, the flowering period can be 1, 2, or 3 times per year depending on regional climate and local soil. In San Diego we often see flowering in both Fall and Spring.

The fruits of P. guajava varieties in the native habitat range in size from mandarins to large oranges. Fruits grown elsewhere might be smaller due to (a) cooler weather, (b) improper nutrition, or both. Another reason for small fruit can be that the plant was mislabeled by the grower or nursery, and is instead a Cattley guava which produces golf-ball size fruit. There are also a few cultivars developed under cultivation in India which produce cantaloupe size fruit.

Nice growth you have going there, and yes those are flower buds in the lower picture.

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sunfish

This one has been flowering nonstop since May

Richard

Tony, it's that uranium phosphite fertilizer you've been using

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