What pineapple guava cultivars produce good fruit in the U.S. south?

Very nice yield!

So since I had so many, I took the pulp out and


froze a lot of the fruit. I also saw a New Zealand blog where they took the skins and made a simple syrup. Threw them into a pot with equal amounts water and sugar, filtered it back out. Itā€™s great. My wife dislikes the fruit, but loves the simple syrup.

I think the filtered skins can be used in baking as well. Iā€™ll give that one a shotā€¦

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Great thread!

Iā€™m in SoCal Z10.

Considering ordering the following varieties (mostly based on availability + research).

Would welcome any feedback or advice or warnings against specific ones.

Marion
Anatoki
Kaiteri
Waingro
Takaka

Thank you!

Hey, there is actually a California feijoa thread as well. Iā€™m not sure how 10a works since the lack of chilling hours can reduce fruiting.
If you only get 1,Takaka is self fertile and produces well.

If youā€™re getting multiple, most of those are good. Marion is known to have some empty fruit unless itā€™s pollinated well.
In fruiting, Kaiteri, anatoki, takaka are early.
Marion is in the middle, and waingoro is lateā€¦

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Sorry about that - I couldnā€™t find one about CA except for one with a single post with no responses. LMK if I should move my Q and your response there. Happy to do it.

And also thank you for the feedback.

Iā€™m wondering if I should reduce it to 2 early, 2 mid and thatā€™s it for now. Or maybe 2 early and 2 late.

Let me look up some options and post back in a bit.

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I checked and it was actually for the Pacific Nw, not So Cal at all, so I guess this thread is okā€¦

Let us know what varieties you choose!

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Thanks!

I think Iā€™m leaning towards just the early ones for now. Though I did post about some scions I obtained and want to try grafting:

Has anyone here ordered seedlings from OneGreenWorld? Iā€™m debating whether to get the 4.5in seedlings or the 1 gal. 1 gal probably makes more sense?

I got scions for
Albertā€™s Supreme
Lickverā€™s Pride
Marjane

Would you or anyone here know if these are early/mid/late varieties? Depending on that, I can decide the final list I want to buy. (i.e. if 2 of these are late, then I donā€™t need to buy another late variety but if only 1 of them is late and the other 2 are early, then I probably need to buy a late companion.

Thanks for all the advice!

Ended up going with:
Anatoki
Kaiteri
Takaka

and 3 seedlings to try grafting on.

Thans for the advice @manfromyard and for the great thread everyone!

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Oh yeah

Albertā€™s Supreme is lateā€¦
Lickverā€™s Pride is Mid-late afaikā€¦

I donā€™t know of anyone who grows Marjane unfortunatelyā€¦

I usually get my seedlings from fruitwood as they are a bit cheaper to the east coast, and they usually have a lot of scionwood of other fruits that I haveā€¦

But they should balance out the early varieties that you bought nicely!

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Good to hear! Do you usually graft onto the ā€œseedling plugsā€ or onto 1gal seedlings? Iā€™ve never done grafts for pineapple guavas and saw the other thread mentioning they are a bit finicky.

Last time I planted 1 years, then cleft grafted them the next year.

With the 1 year plants this year, I will be trying veneers which seem to work for othersā€¦

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Good to know thanks. Iā€™m waiting for my orders to arrive with bated breath :slight_smile: ā€¦

Excited to get these growing and grafted and taste some fruit in a year or two hopefully.

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Do feijoa grafts take a long time to push growth? I field grafted a bunch in mid Feb and a couple are pushing growth but most have yet to push a bud. However the grafts havenā€™t failed still green to a scratch test

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I treat mine like Citrus (sub tropical evergreens), so I only graft between 70 and 85 degrees F. So I would really start grafting this weekend for my 8B.

When I did them earlier, they just sat like yours. The grafts donā€™t really take till it warms up, unlike my persimmon, pears, and deciduous fruitā€¦

But that depends on where you are. Sweet spot seems to be 70-80 before the heat starts hardā€¦

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And do you only graft directly to young saplings or have you tried grafting to younger branches of existing (older) trees too? There was a bunch of advice on the other thread on fejioa grafting that seemed to indicate that grafting only works when done onto young seedlings. Though maybe Iā€™m reading too much into that. Iā€™d love to be able to create a Frankentree to keep trying new varieties instead of grafting to a seedling each time.

Iā€™m grafting only onto my existing shrubs, they are 3 years old unnamed variety. Just wanted to add some named cultivars to my seedlings

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Which ones did you graft?

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I could be wrong about a couple without looking at them but ā€œcandyā€ ā€œAlbertā€™s joyā€ ā€œNikitaā€ ā€œkazmetzā€ and ā€œmammothā€ if I recall correctly

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Very cool. I have some seedling plants that Iā€™ll probably multi graft next year. Hopefully yours take well so I can just copy your technique.

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My seedling is flowering already
This seems much earlier than normal. Takaka still has not bloomed yetā€¦

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