Gadenin日本語Get the appSpring: growth, and hands off the shears
As the soil warms, feijoa pushes the new shoots that will carry this year's flowers. This is the one time of year when you must not prune. Shearing or tipping now removes the shoots that would flower, which is why a feijoa kept as a neatly clipped spring-trimmed hedge produces no fruit at all.
Spring work is preparation instead. Refresh the mulch out to the branch tips, keeping a clear collar around the stem, and pull any grass that has crept back into the root zone. If the plant is on poor soil or in a container, this is the moment for the year's only feed: a light dressing of a balanced fertilizer, watered in. On decent ground with an annual mulch, feed nothing. Feijoa fruits worse when it is fed well, not better.
Check the plant over as growth starts. Look for scale on the stems and ants running up and down them, and deal with both now rather than in midsummer when the population has multiplied. Remove any shoots coming from below a graft union.
Early summer: flowering, the fortnight that decides the year
The flowers open over roughly two to three weeks, large, with thick white petals flushed deep pink inside and a brush of crimson stamens. This is the highest-value fortnight in the feijoa year, and what you do in it determines whether you gather fruit in autumn or watch flowers fall.
Watch first. Go out on a warm morning and spend ten minutes seeing whether birds are working the flowers and stripping the petals. If they are, natural pollination is happening and you can leave it be. If nothing is visiting, take a soft brush and move pollen from one plant's stamens onto the taller central stigma of the flowers on the other, doing twenty or thirty flowers at a time and repeating every two or three days as new flowers open.
Eat some petals while you are there. They are sweet, fleshy and faintly of marshmallow and cinnamon, and taking them carefully with your fingers, leaving the stamens and the central style behind, does not cost you the fruit that flower would have set. Do not spray anything during bloom.
Keep the plant watered through flowering. A feijoa that dries out while in flower drops its flowers, and a dry spell here cannot be made up later.
| Season | Main job | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Spring | Mulch, weed, light feed only if poor soil | Scale and ants; do not prune |
| Early summer | Watch pollination; hand pollinate if needed | Flowers dropping whole with nothing behind |
| Midsummer | Deep soak weekly; stop feeding | Fruitlets dropping at marble size |
| Late summer | Keep watering; prepare the drop zone | Thrips, scale, dry soil |
| Autumn | Collect fallen fruit daily | Wasps, fruit fly, fruit left lying |
| After the last drop | Prune, open the center, clear litter | Crossing wood, congested middle |
| Winter | Protect young plants; check drainage | Waterlogging; frost damage on new growth |
Summer: water is the whole job
From fruit set until the fruit reaches full size, water decides the crop. An established feijoa wants the equivalent of an inch (25 mm) a week, from rain or from you, delivered as one long slow soak over the whole root spread rather than as frequent light sprinkles, which only wet the mulch and train roots upward. A plant in a container may need this two or three times a week in heat.
Fruitlets dropping in quantity at marble or walnut size is the sign that you are behind, and it is regularly misread as a pest or a disease. So is a heavy nitrogen feed: stop feeding entirely by midsummer, because late nitrogen makes soft growth that neither hardens before winter nor carries fruit.
Late in the summer, prepare the ground. Mow the grass short under the plant, clear weeds and debris out of the drop zone, and decide whether you need netting against birds. Doing this before the fruit starts falling is far easier than doing it around a crop already on the ground.
Autumn: the drop, and the daily walk
Feijoa needs a long mild autumn to finish, and the fruit gives no color signal at all: it stays green from set to ripeness. Ripeness announces itself by the fruit falling. Over three to six weeks the crop comes down a few fruit at a time, and your job is a basket and a walk underneath once a day, twice when it is warm.
Collect everything, including the damaged fruit, and sort as you go. Sound fruit keeps about a week at room temperature and two to four weeks refrigerated in a paper bag; damaged fruit goes to the kitchen today. Do not leave rejects lying, because windfalls left under the plant are what breed fruit fly and draw wasps. A shrub in a good year can bring down forty to sixty pounds (18-27 kg) in a month, so plan for a glut before it arrives and freeze scooped pulp on the heaviest days.
If a hard frost is forecast while fruit is still hanging, strip what remains and let it soften indoors. It will not be as good as fruit that fell on its own, and it is better than losing the lot.
- Walk the drop zone daily Green fruit on green grass is easy to miss, so search by hand as well as by eye and go well beyond the branch tips. Fruit rolls further than you expect.
- Shake gently rather than pick A light tap on the main branches brings down what was ready today. Never pull fruit off: a picked feijoa is hard, gritty and almost flavorless however long you keep it.
- Dispose of rejects properly Bag and seal, freeze or bury deeply. Rejects thrown on an open potting mix heap under the plant simply recycle fruit fly and molds back into next year.
- Prune as soon as the last fruit is down Take out crossing and inward growth, open the center, cap the height at six to eight feet (1.8-2.4 m) and lift the skirt clear of the ground. Flowers come on new wood, so this regrowth is next year's crop.
- Clear the ground and close the year Rake off fruit and leaf litter, refresh the mulch and check that the plant is not sitting in wet ground going into winter.
Winter, and the record that makes next year easier
Established feijoa is hardy to around 12F (-11C) and needs no protection in most temperate gardens; it is evergreen and simply sits through the cold. Plants in their first two winters are a different matter and are worth wrapping or heavily mulching, since young wood is damaged well above the temperature that mature wood shrugs off. A container plant is far more exposed than the same plant in the ground and should be moved against a wall or into a sheltered corner.
The real winter risk is not cold but wet. Feijoa will not tolerate ground that stays saturated, and root and collar rot in a wet winter is the most likely way to lose an otherwise healthy plant. Check that water is not pooling around the base, and if it is, plan on lifting and mound-planting in spring rather than hoping.
Winter is also when you write the year up. Keep one page per plant with six lines: the date the first flower opened, whether birds were working the flowers, how many flowers you hand-pollinated, the date of the first fruit drop, the date of the last, and the total weight collected. The gap between first flower and first drop is the length of your ripening season, and after three years those six lines will tell you whether you need a second plant, whether hand pollination is earning its time, and whether your autumn is long enough for the crop you want.
If your fruit is consistently still hanging green when the first frosts arrive, the answer is site rather than technique. Reflected heat from a sun-facing wall, hard surfaces around the base and a lower, more open plant all move ripening earlier by useful days.