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Guava is unusually easy to plan because everything follows from the prune. Cut the tree back before growth starts and it pushes a flush of new shoots. Those shoots carry the flowers, because guava flowers only on growth made in the current season. Roughly six to ten weeks after the prune the first flowers open. Two to three weeks after petal fall the young fruit is at marble size and must be bagged. Three to five months after that the fruit reaches the color break and comes indoors to finish.
Because each link has a fairly consistent interval, you can work the whole year backwards from when you want to be picking, and you can shift the harvest by moving the prune. That is a genuinely useful lever in a marginal climate, where the aim is to have the crop finished before the first cold nights.
The year at a glance
The table below is written for a single-crop year, which is what a potted or overwintered tree gives you and what most growers outside the fully tropical zone will see. In a frost-free climate with a long warm season, a mature tree runs the same sequence twice, with a lighter prune after the first crop producing a second flush and a smaller second harvest.
| Season | The tree | Your job | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late winter to early spring | Dormant or barely moving | Main hard prune, taking a third to a half of last year's growth; repot or root-prune a container tree; move it outdoors once nights hold above 50F (10C) | Frost forecasts after the tree has been moved out; scale on overwintered wood |
| Spring | Strong flush of new shoots | Begin balanced feeding as shoots reach two inches (5 cm); start regular deep watering; rub off suckers from the base | Pale new leaves with green veins, meaning iron or zinc shortage |
| Late spring to early summer | Flower buds and open flowers on the new shoots | Switch to a lower-nitrogen, higher-potassium feed; keep water absolutely steady | Any drought stress now costs fruit set |
| Early to midsummer | Young fruit at marble size | Thin clustered fruit and bag every one you intend to keep; clear all windfalls daily | Fruit fly activity; a loose bag neck is a lost fruit |
| Midsummer to autumn | Fruit swelling | Deep, regular water; keep feeding; check the tree weekly for scale and anthracnose | A dry spell now shows as a wave of fruit drop a fortnight later |
| Late summer to autumn | Fruit reaching the color break | Walk the tree daily with pruners; pick at the color break and finish indoors on a tray | Fruit softening on the branch means you are a day late |
| Late autumn | Growth slowing, last fruit in | Stop feeding; reduce water; bring a potted tree in before the first frost | Soft late growth that will burn in the first cold snap |
| Winter | Resting, half dormant | Water sparingly, roughly every ten days in a pot; keep cool and bright; do not feed | Scale and mealybug spreading fast in warm dry indoor air |
Adjusting the timing to your own season
The chain from prune to picking runs about five to eight months in total, and the last stretch of it needs warmth. If your crop is regularly caught by cold weather while the fruit is still hard and green, the fix is to prune earlier rather than to hope for a longer autumn. Moving the prune three weeks earlier moves everything downstream by roughly the same amount.
- Fix your picking target first Decide the latest week you can reasonably expect warm weather, then subtract three to five months for the fruit to fill and color. That gives you the week the flowers need to be open.
- Work back to the prune Subtract another six to ten weeks from flowering, which is how long the tree takes to flush and flower after being cut. That is your prune date. In a marginal climate this often lands earlier than feels comfortable, which is the point.
- Bring a potted tree out to match A tree that is overwintering indoors will not flush until it is warm, so pruning early only helps if you can also give it warmth. If your prune date falls before it is safe to put the pot outside, keep the tree somewhere bright at 60 to 65F (16 to 18C) after pruning to start the flush, then harden it off outdoors.
- Confirm your own intervals in the first year The figures above are typical, not universal. Record your own prune-to-flower and flower-to-picking gaps once, and from then on plan with your numbers instead of general ones.
What to log through the year
Six dates cover a guava year completely: prune, first new shoot, first open flower, bagging day, first color break, and last pick. Add your winter low and how the tree looked after it, plus a rough weight for the crop. That is a page a year, and it is enough to turn the whole cycle from something you react to into something you schedule.
Where you have more than one tree, or a tree in the ground and another in a pot, keep the dates separately and note which is which. The differences between them, especially between a sheltered pot and an exposed position, are usually bigger than any advice you will read, and they are the numbers that actually apply to your garden.