Pineapple guavas (feijoas) make me happy!
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alanmercieca
- Posts: 206
- Joined: Fri Nov 01, 2019 3:59 pm
- Location: North Carolina
Re: Pineapple guavas (feijoas) make me happy!
Nope, I have not tried them at all, not even store bought fruit.
Re: Pineapple guavas (feijoas) make me happy!
Josh let me know if they work for you, I'm in 7b (HSV) and want to attempt them as well if there's a variety that can handle occasional 10s.
Re: Pineapple guavas (feijoas) make me happy!
Just wanted to update everyone on my experience with the two feijoas I mentioned in my previous post (apollo and nikita), and some other feijoa enthusiasm
I have to say, if you haven't tried feijoa fruits or growing them yet, holey moley you should! They're extremely ornamental trees, great color and texture on the bark, leaves are nicely shaped and evergreen (look similar to other members of myrtacae, psidium, eugenia etc..), apparently they are very cold hardy in comparison to other members of the family, probably on par with pomegranate. The only thing I wish feature-wise they had, aside from more cold tolerance, would be fragrant flowers, that's literally about the only fault I can come up with so far...that the flowers are gorgeous but don't really have a smell.
In my greenhouse (probably gets to 25 degrees F or so a few times a year), there has been no dieback on anything so far, not really much pest issues at all (some scale but they seem to brush it off like nothing) - but keep in mind the late spring freezes/frost in my area (east coast zone 6b), if the feijoas were grown outside, that could possibly be a big issue if the cold hardiness itself is not. I've been considering growing out some seeds from my nikita x apollo cross pollinations just to see how hardy they really are but I just don't have too much time or space to do this.
On that note... Would anyone like some nikita x apollo seeds to grow out for postage? PM me! I'd love to know how the progeny does for you even if you put them through heck in a marginal area
My greenhouse is closed /screened during spring summer fall, so bees or pests etc. can't easily get inside, so I hand pollinate them each year while eating the petals off the flowers. the crop this year was about double that of last year. So far, In my opinion, I would still consider apollo much superior to nikita in production taste fruit size etc, it tastes like what is in my opinion the perfect green/yellow kiwi depending on ripeness. the nikita has such a strong floral note to me that I cannot ascertain other flavors aside from sweet, I'm thinking maybe the heat this year had progressed ripening and perhaps I didn't pick them at the optimal time as the flesh was slightly darker and less jelly-like than last year. When I cut into the nikita fruits, the overwhelmingly strong smell of bubblegum (and like gardenia or passiflora flower smell?) filled my kitchen
I have two new varieties this year from OGW - Takaka and Anatoki, I am super excited to try these, as out of all the weird or novel fruits I grow, this has been my favorite personal fruit discovery, I like the fruit to eat out of hand even more than all of the varieties of citrus I grow, save for lemonade or nordmann seedless. There are huge ongoing breeding efforts in new zealand and the cultivars they keep releasing over there are making me super zone envious, but also very excited about the future!
I have to say, if you haven't tried feijoa fruits or growing them yet, holey moley you should! They're extremely ornamental trees, great color and texture on the bark, leaves are nicely shaped and evergreen (look similar to other members of myrtacae, psidium, eugenia etc..), apparently they are very cold hardy in comparison to other members of the family, probably on par with pomegranate. The only thing I wish feature-wise they had, aside from more cold tolerance, would be fragrant flowers, that's literally about the only fault I can come up with so far...that the flowers are gorgeous but don't really have a smell.
In my greenhouse (probably gets to 25 degrees F or so a few times a year), there has been no dieback on anything so far, not really much pest issues at all (some scale but they seem to brush it off like nothing) - but keep in mind the late spring freezes/frost in my area (east coast zone 6b), if the feijoas were grown outside, that could possibly be a big issue if the cold hardiness itself is not. I've been considering growing out some seeds from my nikita x apollo cross pollinations just to see how hardy they really are but I just don't have too much time or space to do this.
On that note... Would anyone like some nikita x apollo seeds to grow out for postage? PM me! I'd love to know how the progeny does for you even if you put them through heck in a marginal area
My greenhouse is closed /screened during spring summer fall, so bees or pests etc. can't easily get inside, so I hand pollinate them each year while eating the petals off the flowers. the crop this year was about double that of last year. So far, In my opinion, I would still consider apollo much superior to nikita in production taste fruit size etc, it tastes like what is in my opinion the perfect green/yellow kiwi depending on ripeness. the nikita has such a strong floral note to me that I cannot ascertain other flavors aside from sweet, I'm thinking maybe the heat this year had progressed ripening and perhaps I didn't pick them at the optimal time as the flesh was slightly darker and less jelly-like than last year. When I cut into the nikita fruits, the overwhelmingly strong smell of bubblegum (and like gardenia or passiflora flower smell?) filled my kitchen
I have two new varieties this year from OGW - Takaka and Anatoki, I am super excited to try these, as out of all the weird or novel fruits I grow, this has been my favorite personal fruit discovery, I like the fruit to eat out of hand even more than all of the varieties of citrus I grow, save for lemonade or nordmann seedless. There are huge ongoing breeding efforts in new zealand and the cultivars they keep releasing over there are making me super zone envious, but also very excited about the future!