About

Do you have a slightly insane and irrational love of feijoas? Me too.

When I first started these pages, I had two trees growing in my back yard. As I waited for them to fruit, I began to find out more about my favourite fruit and realised that I knew nothing and also that my passion was matched by many others all around the world.

Life intervened and we moved interstate to a warmer part of Australia, so I no longer have feijoas in my backyard, but the blog continues to grow.

Over time I hope these pages become a fascinating snapshot of feijoa culture… of recipes, growing information, commercial products, orchards, illustrations and design, places and people, in fact anyone and anything inspired by and dedicated to this humble little green fruit.

Many thanks for stopping by. — Juliana

34 thoughts on “About”

  2. Hello Juliana,
    I am impressed with your list of varieties, I have just been googling up information of cultivars. Glad I found your page. I have reason to believe that K51 also goes under the name ‘Den;s Choice’, Can’t help but notice your list omits ‘White Goose’ and ‘Golden Goose’. Nice to see Bambina on your list though.
    Thanks

    1. Thanks for stopping by Morgan. I’m aware of the White Goose and Golden Goose varieties, but haven’t got any verified growing information on them. Because this is just a passion and not a job, there are still yawning gaps in the information I have collected. I’ll see if I can check the K51/Den’s Choice link too. :)

  3. Hello Juliana – it would be great if you could put a link on your site for
    Pole to Pole Fresh Ltd. We pack and market a lot of feijoas in NZ and export also. Your site is great and very informative. All the best.

  4. Hi Juliana
    Love love love feijoa’s
    Fingers and toes are crossed that they will still have fruit when I visit Hinterland Feijoa next weekend. Yay
    I have a selfish question but do you know of any one in Tasmania that sells feijoas
    Ive lived in Australia for 25 years now and still cant believe that it hasnt taken off here and that I have to pay for feijoas (sigh)
    My dad managed to get fruit off his trees when he lived in Brisbane but green thum I do not have :(

  6. Hi there!
    I’m very glad to find your blog and all the wonderful recipes! Our feijoa tree is dropping more than we can eat now. I just wish i’d found you last year!

  8. Yes, sure, thanks!. Also I have a very important message from a feijoa grower:

    “growingyourgreens // Harvesting Ripe Pineapple Guava aka Feijoa Acca sellowiana:
    Im saying my feijoas were from the nursery, but sold as unnamed varieties, and they taste BETTER than any named variety I have tasted this far. That being said, the secret is in the soil. Be sure to add rock dust and rich compost to provide the tree everything it needs. Im not sure if mine were originally from seed or cuttings.

  9. Yes, also, maybe we can’t talk about “cultivars” in this case, as all feijoas i have (and almost all feijoas i know in the nurseries) are growing from seeds. So they are not clones of another feijoa. But, for sure, our feijoas must be similar to the one André took to France.

    “Are there scientific/horticultural places in Argentina that specialise in feijoas? ”

    Not so much, I know about scientific or commercial efforts in Uruguay. All I know is information on the Internet. There are published studies on the antioxidant capacity of feijoa compared Guaviyú, pitanga and arazá (all from the same family):

    http://www.huertasurbanas.com/2012/06/18/propiedade-nutritivas-y-farmaceuticas-de-araza-guaviyu-pitanga-y-guayabo/

    In Uruguay are marketed in a nascent, there are small producers in northern Argentina, but do not specialize in feijoa but several of these native fruits (there are many interesting species!).

    http://www.inia.org.uy/online/site/987044I1.php

    In Brazil may be marketed more as the market and the population is more accepting of “exotic” fruits.

    Here in Argentina nobody knows anything about the feijoas, at best, they are called false guava, and there are even nurseries, which they say gives an inedible fruit!

    This means that here is like talking about “alien eggs”. People in general is biased with green fruit, think they are immature and do not even want to try it! And to think that is 6 times more antioxidants than grapes! It is wrong to ignore this.

    In Colombia they are studying it:

    http://www.cci.org.co/cci/cci_x/Sim/Manuales/Productos/Frutas/Feijoa/feijoa02.htm

    —
    In recent weeks I discovered nurseries do sell Feijoa sellowiana (and call it “false guava” or sometimes acca sellowiana). Prices vary widely, from $ 35 to $ 170 (Argentine pesos (1 dollar = 4.4 pesos)) to the nursery, tree size and age. There are copies for sale from 1 to 3 years old, height ranging from 50 cm to 1.8 m.
    The interest of the growers is generally sold as an ornamental tree, not sold off. Perhaps the nurseries in the north (Misiones, Corrientes, Chaco) have more opportunity to produce fruit,

    but here in Buenos Aires (center of the country) that does not happen.
    I have a friend who tried the feijoas as a kid, he went to a religious school and the priests gave the fruit for dessert, they ate with a spoon. That happened for the 1980 approximately. Then, almost no one knows the feijoas here. I was lucky to find in my city (Junin) a nurseryman who had eaten and cultivated feijoas a child, and now thanks to him I have these copies.
    I’ll try, anyway, to get other more grown specimens (3 years old) so I can see the fruits during summer-autumn in 2013. Here in Buenos Aires I guess we have a climate similar to New Zealand.

    —
    Thanks for all your dedication and above all for your good vibes: I began to grow feijoas because I wanted a tree that could grow with the Fukuoka method of not-doing, trying to look more to master nature, respect, wonder, living in company the beauty it produces. Good luck also with your feijoas and hopefully produce more fruit in the future.
    How old are your feijoas? They are seed or clones?

    1. My feijoas are seedlings, about three years old. (I would like to plant some cultivars too to see how they compare.) This year my trees flowered prolifically and for the first time gave me just two fruit. Next year, hopefully, they will be more successful. I grew up in New Zealand and no-one “grew a tree” they just grew everywhere. Here in Australia, the climate is trickier (much warmer) and there are fruit flies and the birds do not pollinate and bees are becoming scarce. I pollinated mine by hand but it was obviously not as successful as I hoped. Thanks for all the information you have provided… it is interesting that in our part of the world they are almost worshipped and yet in the country they are native to they are not so popular. I wish you much luck too with your trees… hopefully you can write back and let me know in a few seasons, or when they fruit.

  10. Pingback: » “en Nueva Zelanda, el método de Fukuoka funciona a la perfección” Huertas Urbanas

    1. Wow, you may be my first visitor from South America!! I’m thrilled you found this site. Sadly, I am not an expert at identifying cultivars… do you mind if I create a post about your plants and ask the community? There are growers who may know. One day I would like to have a photo of each cultivar available here for identification, but there are so many and I certainly have not seen or tasted all of them. Not yet :)

      1. Hi, thanks for replying. Your site is well ranked on google, so it’s easy to find, it’s very well constructed, so if you are looking for feijoa info on the net, you will find it.

        Obviously you can make a post about our feijoas.

        I made a video here:

        My english is not very good, but I hope you understand it.

        I would like to plant more in the backyard, but, to do so, maybe I will have to wait till I get the apricot, guajava, pitanga, maybe some nuts and so… because I must study these other trees, plant them and then see where could I include some more feijoas.

        Ah! I was missing something good: yesterday when I where in the nursery, I asked again to the owner about these feijoas he grow.

        He ensured me (“guaranteed”) that he grows all these feijoas from seeds, and that he took the seeds from a tree that is LONELY in a field, so he think they must be self-fertile :-D, also, he thinks that planting from seed is very fine because, he said, every new one will be better than the mother tree.

        Do you think the same?

        Also, he told me that, when he was a child, his family used to eat feijoas from a 60 years old tree that later was killed by another tree that was destroyed by a lightning storm. But they reproduced it by seeds, and now this feijoas we have are grandsons from that original tree in some way.

        So, I dont know what cultivar they belong to, but I hope that in 2 years they will be bringing some fruit to eat :-D

        The idea behind the feijoas is just to grow them using the Fukuoka’s method: in their original climate (here) they should be just fine without doing nothing.

        Just askme anything about our feijoas: I can take more photos anytime, etc. I guess they are a cultivar just native to these lands (where they originated), maybe native to a northen part of my country, as we live in Junín (Provincia de Buenos Aires), and we guess they belong to Misiones, Corrientes, Chaco, maybe Santa Fe, etc., the south of Brasil, Uruguay and Paraguay.

        Cheers

      2. Thank you for the video Marco… that makes things very clear. My guess too is that you have an original cultivar, maybe even the one we call Andre which was taken to Europe originally. That is known to be self-fertile, and maybe the native trees in South America are naturally fertile, more than the varieties created here this past century? Something I would like to learn more about. Regarding growing from seeds, there are different opinions: some people say they have no problems and are successful, others say it is too irregular and you need plants that are grafted from successful cultivars. Are there scientific/horticultural places in Argentina that specialise in feijoas? Commercial growers or nurseries? I would be interested to know if your country loves this fruit too or whether it is just a wild tree? I wish you much luck with growing your trees… two years goes quickly although mine produced one solitary fruit this year (sigh). Maybe next year. Also, they don’t mind a frost… hopefully your frost is not too severe but feijoa are renowned for being very tough. And they need the cold to produce the fruit, so that is a good thing. I will keep looking for more information about your trees, but it may take a while. Oh and in New Zealand, Fukuoka’s method works perfectly. No-one does anything and they just grow and fruit. Wishing you lots of fruit!!

  12. Hi Juliana, I have just found your site and, as a commercial feijoa grower in New Zealand, I think it’s WONDERFUL that you are so passionate about this fruit. If you would like to see how our co-op works (along with recipes and other postings), check out our facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/futurefruit. I look forward to testing some of your recipes. ☺

    1. Hi Raych, thanks for stopping by to comment. I can’t wait until this industry is buzzing over here in Australia as much as it does in New Zealand. Love your FB page and all the photographs – do you know how much I adore marmalade cats too? I’ll add you in to some of the links so my visitors can find you – it’s always nice to hear from the growers. And I fixed the slash :) Will check out some of your recipes too.

      1. The marmalade is our fat cat Fantapants. He enjoys being out in the orchard… as does Mr PigPig, our porcine feijoa garbage disposal unit. He is extremely happy that our fruit is nearly ready, as he gets the rejects. ☺ I am sure he will feature on our page soon too. Thanks again for collecting and sharing such useful information.

  13. Hi Julianna, Stumbled across your site via Ooooby. I can send you descriptions for some of the varieties you don’t have one for : )

    Kate

  14. hi Julianna. love love love this site. has everything i was looking for and more. i am going to try the feijoa paste…it sounds fantastic. thanks.

  15. Hi Juliana,
    I am writing an article about feijoas for a permaculture magazine and was wondering if I could use your blog as a reference point for people to go to for information and also use one of your recipes in the article (haven’t decided which one yet – they all look so nice!!!!!!). Of course I would credit you! What a great site! Very interesting! Cheers, Natalie

    1. Wow, thanks Natalie, go ahead. My primary aim was to spread the word about this fabulous fruit – which still meets with many a blank stare over here in Australia whenever I mention it – and which needs more growers, wider distribution and cleverer marketing. If there is any way I could get a copy of the published article, that would be a bonus. And yes, so many really good recipes!! Many more to come.

    1. Hi Ian, thanks for stopping by and signing up, it’s great to have some kiwi expertise to refer back to – will be joining you on your Facebook page too. Just so it’s clear, I am not responsible for the fantastic feijoa page on Facebook – I am just promoting it and I think it’s phenomenal that so many people are crazy mad about feijoas. I’ll be posting again from this week… more great feijoa-ness coming soon.

    1. Thanks Sally, I decided to keep it simple and look for a designer some time down the track. But this design makes it easier to read, I think. My flowers are about to unfurl so I am hoping to get some more photos too.

    1. Thanks Sally, I’ve hurt my back so computer time is curtailed at the moment. Will get more recipes up soon, I promise.

  19. Fabulous site Juliana – well done! I’ll be coming here for recipes for sure.

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