I haven’t understood it. It is a rather unusual fruit that seems to swell up with the onset of cold and rain.
2 Likes
A minor frost will do nothing but a hard frost of 27 or so will stop them.
1 Like
Good to know. Thanks. I really wish I had been more diligent with my garden journal last season. Would be nice to know how far along they are compared to last year.
Are yours ahead, behind or the same as last year’s crop?
I suspect the January freeze impacted the fruit set on the plants growing here. For sure it did for one of the two Coolidge I have.
One was severely burned by the two days below freezing, while the other was not visibly harmed at all. The strange thing about it is that the one that got badly burned is currently covered with many dozens of fruit, while the one that looked fine has only 2 fruit. Perhaps just a coincidence, but is perplexing nonetheless.
Sometimes severe stress will push plants into fruiting/reproduction mode because ultimately… everything just wants to survive and pass on their genes.
You can find this example with severely stressed out Citrus plants even at young ages. Although they can’t set fruit, they try to in what looks like a last ditch effort to survive somehow
Indeed, all life forms are vehicles for the DNA to diversity and replicate.
I’ve found that posting pictures on Facebook or here is a cheat for the sort of note taking you mention. I can look at pictures I posted from years back and see what fruit looked like and when.
2 Likes
I use this forum as a way to track my fruits year over year – also for ripening dates.
2 Likes
I didn’t know this was a dating site!
8 Likes
My Unique dropped one fruit today. Thinking about picking the other that’s still hanging on.
Also i got a scale 
so i could do the scale photos like everyone. I got it for 8$ last night. It’s 10$ now if anyone is looking for a cheap scale. Amazon.com
2 Likes
Well so far most of them are rather disappointing. But that is probably due to the seed source. Feijoa seeds and plants were hard to find ten years ago n Europe. The first batches of seeds I received was from friends in Southern Europe who collected seeds from bushes they found growing in their neighborhoods. A couple of years later I managed to find fruit at tropical market places that was of good quality and then I planted the seeds of those. Even later I was able to buy plants of the common named varieties here in Europe: Mammoth, Unique, Gemini, Nikita and Apollo.
I planted some seedlings of each batch outside and so far only the seedlings of the first ‘wild ones’ have flowered and fruited and they are all rather disappointing compared to the named varieties.
Four of the seedlings of the imported fruits have fruited so far and all are larger and better tasting than the first batch and one is outstanding and even better than the named varieties.
So all in all I would say take your time to find seeds from really good fruits. It took about 6 to 7 years to grow them from seed to fruiting age, and i have a large number of trees now that I need to take out or graft over.
It is a marvelous fruit and very very promising for my climate, so all in all one of the most exciting breeding projects that I am working on. Even though the first percentages were disappointing, to find that one that does really well was super rewarding.
6 Likes
Now you just gotta set it milligrams so you can post pictures of fruit weighing giant numbers.
1 Like
None of my Feijoas have dropped yet
Nikita
Abbadabba
Kakariki, Arhart, and Takaka are the furthest along but no drops
3 Likes
Interesting. You’re Nikita looks a lot different than mine.
Nikita produces fruits of various different shapes.
It never held onto any maturing fruit until this year.
1 Like
No drops yet, but yesterday one bumped off my back while tending part of the bush and today I picked 8 from a cluster of 10 fruits that had softened early.
1 Like
First drop of the season here. Of a seedling of mine that is always lacking in sweetness, and this one wasn’t any different - very acidic. Waiting for better ones to drop in the coming weeks….
2 Likes
Sadly I’ve only got a couple fruit that have swelled appreciably, like this one (one of Marta’s selections from seedlings of Mark Alpert’s varieties), but nothing soft or dropping:
Most of them never got past runt stage:
A few are somewhere short of complete runt, but still seem unlikely to ripen:
The only fruit on the graft of Larry’s bush is in that slightly-swollen-runt state:
First Feijoa drop of the season.
A Kaiteri runt. Normally they are over 100g. This one was only 49g
I have some giant fruit ripening on Kakariki, Takaka and Arhart. No falls yet.
4 Likes
