Gardening with Tropical Fruit

The Feijoa

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

The Feijoa (Feijoa sellowiana) is a small to medium shrub that rarely gets up to more than 15 feet in height and produces delicious fruits and colorful flowers. The flowers are produced during the spring and have thick white petals with scarlet stamens and the flowers are edible.

The fruit are gray-green in color and about the size of a chicken egg. When mature they fall from the plant which makes it easy for harvesting. Many people will pick fruit and ripen it indoors. It can be eaten fresh or used for delicious jellies and the plant is a handsome ornamental.

The shiny green leaves have a whitish or gray-green undersurface and it’s a very dense plant and makes excellent hedges. Native to South America it has been grown in Florida for many years and is very cold hardy growing throughout most of the state. It will take temperatures down to about 14 degrees before serious damage occurs.

Growth rates are slow and it prefers an acid soil. If grown in highly alkaline soils nutritional deficiencies may develop. Usually trees can be propagated easily from seed, but superior varieties are grafted. The feijoa makes a great container plant for a porch or patio setting and the salt tolerance is very good if you are living close to the ocean or intracoastal.

Generally cooler temperatures or a cool growing season result in better fruiting so they are typically more heavy fruiting in central and north Florida than in south Florida.

Generally it’s recommended that you plant several because heavier fruiting results from cross pollination.