Very helpful! Thank you.
Did you get blooms this year?
I highly recommend waingaro. That’s my new favorite fruit. Has thin very tasty skin with lots of jelly inside. It also bore a decent crop for us in only its second season.
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When does Waingaro ripen in your climate?
My favorite is Abbadabba. It is supposedly an early variety but only swells and ripens in December here. But the flavor is outstanding.
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I began to get waingaro fruit just after Halloween. Harvested the last of them in early December.
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Abbadabba, named after the Swedish group and Fred Flintstsone.
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Wow, -16 is freaking cold for subtropical plants. That’s amazing. They are a phenomenal plant.
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Those -16 C Feijoas must be varieties very different from the usual ones available here. I’ve read that Feijoa bushes tolerate temperatures down to -11 C; and that seems to be about right, since my bushes have experienced noticeable damage at -12 C, with some killed almost to the ground at a temperature below -13 C.
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The coldest mine have ever experienced is -8. They didn’t seem stressed at all by those temps. Several get yellowish in winter but it doesn’t freeze all that often here so I don’t know what’s causing the yellowing. In spring it disappears fast.
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I want to try growing Feijoas in Niagara Ontario; 6b, gets down to -20c /-4 f …is there a way to program seeds/seedlings for cold hardiness? 
It is postulated that growing initially in a colder environment can ‘program’ seedlings for improving cold hardiness… It may depend on the species.
There’s a guy who grows citrus hybrids in Z6 Pennsylvania who started with thousands of seeds and ended up with a handful of survivors. Perfect Circle Farm is selecting Z4 hardy persimmon seedlings with Meader as a parent.
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Update: About a month ago, we had a some early morning temps get down to below 15 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple of nights during that cold snap (I covered my plants with plastic bags overnight and they looked okay after the cold snap was over. However, we started getting much warmer temperatures up into the fifties over the last couple of weeks and most recently, most of the leaves have fallen off within a few days during this warmer weather (I think it may have been very windy during the day as well). I hadn’t been watering as much over the last month as it had been raining some and the ground was damp, but if I water these weekly with some seaweed solution, can they recover? Are they dead and beyond repair?
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A temperature of 15 deg F doesn’t seem very cold to me for Feijoas. I have about 20 seedlings that survived 10 deg F last winter. They lost most of their leaves and the outer parts of their branches but recovered well last summer. This January it got down to around 8 deg F twice, and they look similar to your plants, with only a few green leaves. In previous years even plants that lost all of their leaves and branches have not been killed; they all resprouted from the base of the stalk(s). I suspect that most of the stems on your plants will survive.
By the way, a single layer of plastic does not offer much protection against cold temperatures. I protected 2 Feijoas this January with 3 layers of floating row cover fabric and poly on top, and they showed practically no damage from the 8 deg F temperatures.
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The first one doesn’t look too chipper,but the others may be alright.The bark can be scratched,to see if there is living tissue.
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Over 10,000 dead leaves have been discarded from my large bush in recent weeks.
Defoliation will be at least 98%. Will not know recovery results until 1 June.
Requires patience.
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Heavy defoliation on my potted trees. In ground trees seem a bit less unhappy. I suspect fruit next year will be affected.
But no death or even significant damage noted.
I think your trees are set back but will survive.
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That’s interesting, I guess it was just a little less cold for me here. It was only below 15°F for less than an hour, though it was in the upper teens for many hours on three days in a row. I’m seeing just slight defoliation, including on my graft from @LarryGene’s tree. I gave the bushes a vigorous shake and only one or two more leaves dropped, so it seems like this will be it, but maybe it’ll be more later?
As between my two bushes, this one is more exposed and is the only one with any meaningful leaf drop on the ground below:
But the two grafts (Larry’s first photo, and Oktoberfest second) still seem to have most of their leaves intact:
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Mine is a bit worse on the potted trees. In ground trees have no apparent leaf loss.
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Feijoas really don’t like extended freezes. If you have 15F and it goes to 32 during the day it is ok.
If it stays at 25 and goes back lower in the night then you will see some real damage.
If your leaves fall off when you pull them that’s a good sign your plant is alive. Also if they shrivel after few days the limb is probably dead. Brown leaves that keep their shape should be still ok (plant will just replace them in the spring). At least these are my observations…
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FYI, these were my lows and highs for the worst days of the freeze:
| date | low | high |
|---|---|---|
| January 12 | 18.0°F | 27.0°F |
| January 13 | 14.7°F | 25.5°F |
| January 14 | 17.2°F | 32.2°F |
| January 15 | 20.2°F | 38.0°F |
| January 16 | 20.4°F | 38.1°F |
The 12th was a weird one though, because the high occurred at 12:01am and the low occurred at 11:59pm, so it just was getting colder and colder for the entire 24 hours basically:
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I had a streak of about 5 cold days with winds, lowest temperature measured was 13,4F, lowest average day temperature was 17.9F
5 of my 2 year old feijoas got hit pretty hard. The one 4 year old managed ok but thanks to a better location close to the house. I will post better pictures tomorrow, it’s dark here now
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I have yet to find out why some feijoas can survive 5F (as I met multiple people who claim that) while mine are struggling at much higher temperatures. I went to visit a friend and his 5 year old feijoa looks to be toast from the same cold spell (his minimum was about 8F).
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