Seedlings can produce good quality fruit, but the NZ varieties are far better. I currently have tasted Kakariki, Anatoki, Takaka, and Nikita. Of those I would recommend Kakariki. It produced about 14 fruits this year on its second season with about a 95g average. I have gotten my sweetest fruits from Kakariki and overall the flavor has been great. The NZ varieties have thinner skin that is easier to eat, but most people just cut the fruit in half and scoop the inside out.
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Itâs very hard to tell by shape. I would know mine apart because they have different shapes, but there might be other types with the same shape. Iâld have better luck tasting them so farâŚ
I may have lucked out on my seedling. It has a ton of jelly, and is one of the sweetest that I have. When I topwork my last seedling, i think Iâll leave a branch or two. Other than the bitterness of the skin, itâs really good. I also have started pruning to select branches for grafting in the spring, and it has made the fruit substantially larger. Itâs basically thinning by removing the undersized fruit on the lower, bushier branches. I think they came from Stan McKenzie.
Takaka seems to need to sit after picking for a while to sweeten up. I hope to taste Kaiteri and Kakariki next year. I do wish Apollo was more available as itâs really good, but it seems other than Marta, no-one else is selling budwood.
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Apollo is quite commonly available. I think I got mine from one green world. It is a tasty variety.
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Here in Europe we cannot find the newer NZ varieties yet, so it is interesting to hear what your experiences is with these. It seems that they are all larger and earlier than the first generation NZ varieties that we can get here: Gemini, Mammoth, Apollo and Unique.
Nikita has a very small fruit compared to those, but it is early, sweet and delicious.
Apollo performs the best out of that generation and has good size, sweetness and flavor and itâs flesh is also much more âsolidâ like a banana on the inside, with a less of a clear distinction between hard gritty rind and soft sweet jelly.
In my experience you would want to plant only seedlings of these varieties or of fruits that you find in the supermarket in order to have a chance to find good fruit on your seedlings. Seedlings that you find in nurseries and from nameless plants seem to almost all give small late and sour fruit. I guess that is because it has mostly been grown as an ornamental and curiosity in Europe for the last century.
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I got mine from there about 3 years ago, but theyâve not carried it since the new generation of NZ ones came in. It looks like theyâve tossed Nikita, Apollo, and Mammoth in the trash since Kaiteri came along. Probably because they all buy from Northwoods who doesnât propagate it any moreâŚ
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Now since I have from early, mid, and late, Iâm about feijoaed out now. So time for preservation. I basically remove the pulp and freeze it for ice cream and jams. The skins become feijoacello. The rotten ones and blemished go to compost. So zero waste. The feijoacello with vodka last year was delicious, so
giving everclear a try this year in hopes of getting even more flavor.
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I used everclear to make arancello with my sour oranges this year. Works pretty good.
I didnât know you could do the same thing with fejoa, makes me even more excited for when I start getting fruit.
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Here as well they donât seem to count the days.
They flower late - in June, and then mostly just set a small green pea sized fruit that doesnât seem to grow or do anything during summer. It doesnât matter if it is a long hot summer or short grey one, they just sit there and do nothing until the light changes (diminishes) in the fall and the rains really come in. It seems they start counting from that moment on and then they seem to swell up in stages. Hand pollinated fruit with pollen from another cultivar swells up to about twice the size as wind- or bee-pollinated fruit.
First stage they grow larger with very wrinkly skin:
And then slowly they seem to swell up from the inside with each rain until the skin looks a little less wrinkled:
And even less:
Until they end up with almost smooth skin. Not every variety does that to the same degree, but the basic pattern is the same.
They are super well hidden between the foliage up to this point, and then turn a slightly lighter shade of green which make them stand out from the rest of the tree, making you think that they all appeared overnight out of nowhere. 
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What variety is this?
These are all different seedlings of mine in different stages of ripeness - no named varieties.
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Fruitwood Nursery claims: âPineapple Guavas come pretty true from seed making seedlings a good way to build your collection of the best varieties.â
Is this true? I thought one needed to graft the named varieties. Would love to pick up one of their Mark Albert seedlings, but not convinced theyâre the same as the original, since they are seedlings. Thoughts?
PS For the record, in our location in East San Francisco Bay Areas hills (10a), Moore has been dropping as of last week.
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If theyâre cross pollinated, like with all things cross pollinated, i would assume you get a hybrid of the parent plants.
If they can self pollinate, i would say yes? But cross pollination bring different genetics
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Seems like they come âtruishâ. So closer to the parents than Apples, but not 100% depending on who did the pollinationâŚAlso, the gene pool for most Feijoa is not very wide, so good chances of duplicate genes,âŚ
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Ok this makes sense. Possibly great seedlings, but not the true varietals
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So Marta had a recent short comparing Mark Albertâs Abba Dabba vs Anatoki and also noted that the newer NZ varieties are not as sweet, with a sharper flavor. So itâs as @ramv stated as well. So whatâs to explain this?
- Earlier varieties just donât have enough time to accumulate sugars?
- North Americans like sweeter fruit than New Zealanders do and select for higher sugar?
- Something in the growing environment makes the NZ varieties less sweet when grown in North America?
Guess weâll keep taking notesâŚ
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Where can one get the mark Albert varieties?
I hear so much talk of them but nowhere to buy
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Is fruitwood the only place to get them?
Anyone know how big seedling plugs are?
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I havenât bought any feijoa plugs from them. But I have gotten pomegranate, Okinawa spinach, cape gooseberry, and passiflora. They have all been really small, but I prefer small trees because Iâve found by year 3 they have caught a more established potted tree, so you only saved money and didnât cost time really.
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How small? Like, 2-3 inches or a foot?