A few years ago I had my interest in Guavas rekindled, when a dear old lady I know invited my wife and I to raid her guava tree. We turned it into jam and it was absolutely beautiful and well worth the effort. She had a huge tree and much of the fruit was just rotting on the ground.
Since then we decided to grow a tree of our own, although finding a suitable spot for it was a challenge. The tree we put in is now about a metre high and seems to be liking where I put it. It's north facing so it gets a bit of sun but it also gets a bit of shade from surrounding trees (especially in the winter months when the suns lower). If it grows to the size the old lady's tree was we could be in trouble, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Anyway, it fruited for the first time this year (around March).
We probably got about 2 cups of fruit off it so it'll be a while before we're getting enough to make jam. The darker coloured ones were beautifully sweet. The red ones were still a bit sour, but not bad considering it's the first season of fruit.
I'm picking this new addition will attract more birds to the garden. Anyway, I really like having something to nibble on when wandering through the garden. It brings back a lot of childhood memories for me.
Year 2
After the tree finished fruiting I kind of forgot all about it, so when it fruited again this year it was a nice little treat to pick off some of the darkened fruit which were a bit less tarty than last year. There was a bit more fruit than last year and they seemed a little bigger too, perhaps because of all the rain we’ve been having. In fact some of the fruit had split because of too much water around the time they ripened.
My wife’s been juicing quite a few things from the garden this year. So she threw a few guavas in each time she made some juice, which added a nice flavour. It could be a few years before we have enough to make jam.
I had a jar of Guava jam once that was really nice. I've never tried the fruit as it comes off the tree though. Your turning into a veritable orchardist
ReplyDeleteI'm in training for the new system. Plus it's very satisfying and there's always something to learn.
ReplyDeleteHey gang! How's things? I hope you all have been well. That looks like cherry guava. We have a lot of them up in the mountains here. Sometimes when we go hiking we pick a few. I need to learn how to make jam! We mostly just eat the fruit.
ReplyDeleteHi Antone, thanks for stopping by. Hiking on the mountains of Hawaii, picking wild fruit sounds like fun. I once went hiking in the bush on one of our off-shore islands and got lost. There were no fruit trees, just scrub. That was very scary.
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