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Guava ripens faster than almost any other home-grown fruit. Once it starts to soften, a fruit that is firm and fragrant in the morning can be soft, bruised and past its best by the following morning, especially in hot weather. Growers who wait for the tree to hand them a perfectly ripe fruit end up with a mess on the ground, wasps around the trunk, and a season's crop that came and went in a fortnight.
There is a second reason not to wait. A fully ripe guava on the tree is enormously attractive to birds, wasps and fruit fly, and it broadcasts that fact by scent from a considerable distance. Every day of extra ripening on the branch is another day of exposure. Picking earlier is not a compromise on flavor, because guava is a fruit that finishes properly off the tree.
The rule that works is simple: pick at the color break, before the fruit softens, and let it finish indoors where you control the timing and nothing else gets to it.
Reading the color break
The color break is the point at which the hard green of the immature fruit begins to lift toward yellow, pale green or a lighter, waxier tone depending on the type you grow. It usually shows first around the blossom end and on the side that gets most sun. At the same moment the surface loses its dull matte look and the fruit begins to smell faintly of guava when you hold it close. The flesh at this stage is still firm and the fruit will not yield to thumb pressure at all.
| Stage | Skin | Feel | Smell | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Immature | Hard dark green, matte | Rock hard | None | Leave; it will not ripen off the tree |
| Color break | Green lifting to pale green or yellow at the blossom end | Firm, no give | Faint when held close | Pick now; this is the moment |
| Ready to eat | Full color | Slight give under thumb pressure | Strong, fills a room | Eat within a day or two |
| Over | Full color with soft brown patches | Fingers sink in | Heavy, fermented | Compost, or use immediately for pulp |
Picking and finishing indoors
Guava stems are tough and the branch is brittle, so pulling a fruit off tears bark and often takes a flowering shoot with it. Use pruners and take a short piece of stalk with each fruit.
- Check the tree every day once the first fruit turns The crop does not arrive all at once, but individual fruits move fast. A daily walk past the tree with pruners in your pocket during the four to six weeks of harvest is the whole technique.
- Cut, do not pull Snip the stalk about a quarter inch (5 mm) from the fruit. Handle each one as though it were a peach: guava bruises invisibly at picking and the bruise appears as a brown patch two days later on the counter.
- Lay them out in a single layer indoors Put the fruit on a tray at normal room temperature, 65 to 75F (18 to 24C), out of direct sun and not touching each other. Stacked fruit ripens unevenly and the contact points bruise.
- Let them finish over two to five days The fruit will color up fully, soften slightly and develop its scent. You can tell by smell alone from across the room when a tray is ready. If you want them faster, put a few in a paper bag with a ripe banana; if you want them slower, move the tray somewhere cooler.
- Move ripe fruit to the fridge Once a guava is at eating ripeness it will hold three to five days at 45 to 50F (7 to 10C). Do not refrigerate fruit that has not finished ripening, because cold stops the process permanently and you get a fruit that softens without ever sweetening.
What to do with a glut
A healthy guava produces far more than a household can eat during its few weeks of harvest, and the fruit does not keep. Cooked pulp is the answer that scales. Halve the fruit, simmer with a little water until soft, and push it through a sieve to leave the hard seeds behind; the resulting pulp freezes for a year and is the base for everything from cordial to a set paste.
Fruit picked at the color break also travels and gives away far better than ripe fruit. A tray of firm color-break guavas handed to a neighbor will ripen perfectly on their counter over the next few days, which is not true of anything you pick soft.
Fruit that has been stung by fruit fly looks sound at picking and collapses on the tray a few days later with the flesh turned to brown pulp. Do not compost these where the larvae can complete their cycle; seal them in a bag or drown them first.
Keeping a picking record
Harvest timing is where a written record pays back the fastest, because the whole season turns on a few days. Record the date you saw the first color break, the date of your first pick, the date of your last, and roughly what weight you took. Add the date each fruit came in against the day it was actually ready to eat on the tray, at least for the first few, so you learn how many days your own conditions need.
Set that against the date you pruned and the date the first flower opened, and after two seasons you have the full timeline for your garden: prune to flower, flower to color break, color break to eating. From then on you can plan a prune date that lands the harvest exactly where you want it, and you will know within a week when to start bagging.