Peaches. They are hit and miss from the market. Mostly miss.
I get to share this special peach time with friends and family.
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Must-grow fruits for me are things that aren’t available in good quality at the supermarket such as fresh figs, less common varieties of stone fruit, gooseberries/currants, and properly ripened heirloom tomatoes. Someday I’d like to have a couple of the fancy pear varieties that people here keep talking about like Magness, Warren, or Seckel. And the responses in this thread are doing a pretty good job of convincing me to plant some astringent persimmons.
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What area are you growing Chilean guava in?
I’m a bit confused. @a_Vivaldi is saying he and @Gkight are struggling with heat, a lot of what I had heard was they can’t take cold…where do they grow? An air conditioned sunroom??? OGW says they need zone 8 or warmer and Vivaldi is on zone 8a. I know it’s cold zone not heat zone, but still….
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Peaches - I’ve never had an amazing peach from the store but homegrown peaches are many times better
Strawberries- so much more fragrant and flavorful from the garden. They’re also rather easy to grow though have a short season
Asian pears - the ones in the store seem very watery but the ones I grow (Hosui) crisp yet very butterscotch like and sweet
Tomatoes are much better from the garden than from the store. It’s not even close. Also they’re mostly easy.
Raspberries- they’re a weed here and taste much better than from the store though store bought ones are still pretty good
I’m curious how homegrown apricots are, I don’t think I’ve ever had a good apricot from the store.
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Same… i bought 2 trees to try this year because i keep reading people loving them as well while the ones I’ve tried (grocery store) have been bland
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Kind of surpised no one mentioned Paw Paw. Paw Paw grows wild around here and even the wild ones are outstanding, if picked at the right time.
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Here is the problem. The people in the pnw say their winter kills them, our summer kills them. I have 1 basically thriving, but I hesitate to say that. Because I have thought that in the past and magic death. I however have never had one die from cold. But they definitely don’t belong on this list haha. I’ve killed 4 plants with 2 doing fine? And 1 seems like it’s going to make it for the long haul. It’s in basically full shade
Well, I guess I did say “your” must grow not “the” must grow. Apparently it does well somewhere, just curious where lol.
I wonder if I could grow it in a protected spot. I know I’m a lot cooler than you in winter…but I’d also expect to be hotter in summer since you have the water surrounding you. I do have some currants and gooseberries surviving in a shady spot. The ones I left in sun dropped all leaves and went dormant for the Summer though. Didn’t die, but they will definitely be moved when we heat up this year.
I think your winter would kill it tho. It needs like super specific conditions. I think it would do fine in a pot, it grows slowly. Then you could move it to a better location, just keep it wet.
It’ll probably go on the “someday” list for me. I already have plants that I have to battle cold and others I have to battle heat, really don’t need a plant where both are a problem right now lol. If/when I build a house it will have lots of south windows where such finicky things can reside. Unfortunately my current home has 0 south windows, an east window that’s shaded by a porch, a small east kitchen window, and 2 west windows shaded by a row of trees. Needless to say, high light plants languish and I can only fit a few small mid-low light plants in the space. 
Also planning a nice greenhouse in the somewhat farther future, but I can’t imagine anything heat sensitive surviving a greenhouse in summer.
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I’m not a guava expert but… on vacation I’ve never seen them in full sun.
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Must grow fruits for me are (like @TNHunter stated) to cover the season. I like to walk through the garden and nibble. I also like to fill the freezer with Strawberries, Raspberries, and Black Current… blueberries rarely make it back to the house. I also feel that I must attempt to grow every fruit I theoretically can… but those efforts are a bit early (cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, pears, etc.), my apples are for drinking (cider) and a pie or two.
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Yeah, this isn’t a guava but it thrives in England. I think moisture and no extreme temps are it’s friend.
Ha- I stand by my statement
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It’s similar to how pineapple guava isnt a guava. Just a misleading name, but doesn’t mean you’re wrong haha
It seems to do better in shade. However my real guavas want a good bit of sun for the fruit to taste good.
Maybe an unpopular Idea but I’ll add Goumi. nitrogen fixing so in a worst case scenario you can just plant them next to another fruit tree in hopes it gets some of those benefits. in the landscape they are beautiful in the early spring covered in bell shaped flowers. the fruit has a very unique flavor with a sweet/tart/tannic mix. just ok for fresh eating but Ecologia Design owner Mike Judd says the juice is great in a margarita. I bet they would make a great jam, but I’ve never tried it myself. they seem dead easy to grow, no sprays, no major pest or disease issues I know of.
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Goumi is a great addition to this list
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Peppers! Out of everything in the garden, it is by far the thing I consume the most. There are so many different varieties, can be used in so many different ways and just taste good. I know you can buy them in the store, but being able to just walk outside and pick them when you need them is so nice.
Plus, they are easy to grow, can be grown indoors (or at least overwintered), and get you a crop rather quickly.
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Chilean guava is native to a very, very mild climate region where it’s never very hot or very cold. Central and southern Chile is similar to parts of New Zealand, the warmer parts of the PNW, and the Atlantic seaboard of Europe from southern UK down through Portugal. It’s also at very high latitude so strong sunlight tends to burn it up pretty bad. I think the issue with them in the PNW is that the winters there are cold for too long. Chile doesn’t have a land bridge to the Antarctic, so they don’t get the kinds of large masses of cold air settling in for the season like we see in northern parts of North America. Other than the cold though, the PNW is probably the best place to grow them, at least in the US.
Chilean plants in general are usually really tricky to grow here in the South, even if they’re technically hardy. In addition to the issues with heat and sunlight during summer, we have really wild temperature swings during winter, so plants need to have very good dormancy or they’ll get fried when they break dormancy because it’s above 70 F for a week straight in January. We also get rain throughout the whole year, whereas Chile tends to have a pronounced dry season and a lot of plants from there simply can’t handle being wet all year round. We also have phytophthora and other pathogens that tend to be really hard on plants from the southern hemisphere. Lastly, a lot of the more inland plants from Chile are used to growing in mostly coarse young soils or even volcanic soils and almost always grow on slopes, and tend to be in zones that get much less rain than we do in general, so their roots don’t cope well with saturated soil. A particularly bad one is Luma–folks at the JC Raulston said they’ve seen several year old plants that were otherwise healthy die in an afternoon because it rained too hard and the soil saturated with water. Chilean guava isn’t as bad about that, but it’s still finicky. I’m not sure if Chilean guava is more of a coastal species or an obligate wetland species down there, but it’s for sure a thirsty little plant that can’t stand drying out, but I don’t believe it can tolerate standing water or soil that stays saturated. Finicky.
To top it all off, almost everything from that region is also really slow growing. I guess it’s an adaptation to lower light levels or something, because a lot of New Zealand and Tasmanian species are similar in that respect–and most plants from there and from Chile are all closely related. Whatever the reason, most stuff from Chile takes it’s sweet time in getting sized up.
Pineapple guava fortunately is much less problematic than most Chilean species and is tough as nails.
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