My fiejoa bush in SE Portland had a normal production year in 2021.
(afternoon/evening shade, regular water, hand-pollination)
but the blooms were unaffected by the heat, unlike a fully exposed bush
a few blocks away that had all blossoms fried.
@LarryGene How do you clone a Fiejoa? Do you graft onto the rootstock of a seedling or air root a plant from the original?
Feijoa propagation (other than from seed) is said to be difficult. My attempts have been from tiny cuttings in pots with a growing meduim, and from air layering via a water bottle and sphagnum moss setup, removing ~2" of outer bark, hormone liquid, etc. One study showed the lower on the bush, the more likelihood of success. I did not try pinning extremely low sprouts to the surrounding soil because weevils chew heavily on these low sprouts. I suspect that making an injury to the main trunk a couple of inches above ground would induce sprouts that could be pinned to the soil.
So far, none of the cuttings I have mailed out to forum members have been successfully grafted.
I currently have two air layer assemblies going, started in mid-2021. The last attempt in 2019 resulted in roots after 18 months, but these were not able to keep the 2-year-old branchlets alive after separation from the main bush and replanting in pots.
I wonder how One Green World is propagating them.
… or maybe more accurately Northwoods since I think that is where there trees come from.
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I am sure they have much better and well-practiced methods than I do. The only other plant I have tried propagating from cuttings is Lewisia, and they are easy.
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Interesting, it looks like Northwoods only sells seedlings https://northwoodsnursery.com/category/851/
I wonder it that means One Green World is actually propagating them as they sell several specific varieties.
Northwoods, at least 20 years ago, propagated on their own roots. I was told, or assumed, from cuttings.
When One Green World goes to events, they usually only bring the seedlings. But they sell cultivars retail.
I assume, or was told, Jim Gilbert is responsible for bringing to the US some of the cultivars they have available.
edit:
“… Jim Gilbert and Lorraine Gardner who went to great effort to license, import and propagate these special new varieties.”
I think it was Lorraine who told me, years ago at some event One Green World was selling at, about the cultivar propagation. That’s when they ran both it and Northwoods.
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Host is Mammoth, bud is LarryGene’s famous producer of excellent fruit.
And you can see I goofed by not setting my bud deep enough, the top cut should align with the top of the T.
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@LarryGene That is one of the longer Cultivar names I have heard. If @murky is successful, I think you are going to have to make some sort of “official” name.
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There’s good discussion of feijoa propagation in this thread. And maybe I get in trouble for cross-posting the picture of the bud:
Very nice! Am I remembering correctly that you did those grafts last summer some time?
Yeah, apparently mid August. That’s when I posted in your grafting thread linked above. It’s when his Pineapple quince were ripe.
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…so there is hope yet of propagating this old bush. When these efforts started 3 or 4 years ago, I thought the name ‘Northwoods’ would be appropriate, since the bush was purchased from Northwoods Nursery prior to (1993) the existence of OGW.
But if there are already many ‘Northwoods’ varietals out there, I would settle for ‘GenePool’.
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GenePool works for me.
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How about something like ‘Larry’s Luck’ or ‘Portland Producer’? Or since it was from Northwoods and producing well further North than most it could be ‘Northward Bound’.
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‘PureLuck’ is more like it, as it was a single plant purchased as a generic “Pineapple Guava”.
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What about “LarryLuck” or “LuckyLarry”
It’s not pure luck because it also was important that you were a person who was able to recognize it as special and also willing to facilitate propagation efforts.
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