HOW TO GROW GUAVAS
absolutely delicious guava varieties and how to care for your guava trees
so the first variety of guava we are looking at is the Mexican White guava
now all guavas are tropical plants which means that they do not
tolerate cold very well so although you can easily grow them in states like
California Florida Hawaii and many other states where the temperatures are warm
if you have cold temperatures the guava plants do not tolerate cold and if you
have cold temperatures you can still grow guavas but you can grow them in containers
so as you can see here the guava tree it sprawls into a nice beautiful looking canopy
the Mexican white guava does not grow into a very
large tree as you can see here but this tree which is about five feet tall and
about five years old
produces a lot of guavas and as you can see here the fruits are pretty large in
size and the tree is absolutely loaded with fruits in fact during the months of
the fruting season the tree becomes so heavy that it has to be supported and as
you can see this Mexican white guava produces really large fruit absolutely
large fruits that are a little bit on the firmer side compared to the other
guava varieties and taste-wise they're also not very sweet so these guavas are excellent
if you like guavas
which are not sweet but have a mild and sour taste to them it's a mix of
sour and sweetness in this guava so that's what makes this guava taste very unique it's not
extremely sweet and this is the reason this is one of my favorite guava varieties to grow
if you like guavas that are not very sweet if you just wanna eat them raw this is a great
guava variety it also has a lot of vitamin C usually guavas that have
lesser sugars have higher amounts of vitamin C
so this is a great, healthy guava variety to grow
out of all the other varieties now let's
look at the fruits, so the fruits as you can see here are pretty large this guava
produced the largest amount of fruit and the largest size of fruits as well
compared to all the other guava plants as you can see her it's almost at six
pounds here these four guavas so it's a very productive plant and for the
plant of about five feet tall it's a great plant that you can grow in your
garden and now let's look at how the guava looks like from the inside because
this is a very important characteristic of every guava plant as you can see it's
a little hard to cut this guava because it's pretty firm and not soft at all as
you can see here so it does have seeds it has a lot of seeds hard seeds so if
you have good teeth than you can chew those seeds you can eat this guava raw
so to summarize the
Mexican white guava has a tree that grows up to about five to six feet it produces a
lot of guavas the fruit size is medium to large
the guava tastes a little bit on the sour to sweet side not very sweet
and then it produces guavas that have a lot of seeds a lot of hard seeds
and firm pulp
Now let's look at the second guava variety which is the ruby red guava
now this is as tropical as a guava gets
because this is a typical tropical plant as you
can see here sprawling, almost dwarf kind of a tree but it spreads very wide rather
than spreading tall which is a good thing because it's easy to harvest the
hundreds of fruits this guava tree produces
I mean this is a heavy producer this is
one of the heaviest producing plants I have grown
the guavas that it produces are medium sized guavas they are not very large so small to
medium sized
with a soft exterior and the flesh of this guava is red in color so as you can
see here let's cut open this guava and see so as you can see here Red guavas that are
extremely soft and the seeds are soft too so you if like these kind of guavas
which can put in smoothies this is a great variety to to grow in your garden
it's sweet and it's soft and it's got seeds that are not very hard this is
the small guava plant we started with and this is one guava plant that really
grows very well from seed as well now usually guava plants follow the same
technique as other trees that grafted trees are better than trees grown from
seed but I've seen that this is one guava variety that grows very well when
grown from seeds so here is a summary of the ruby red guava they produce trees
that are about five feet high
bushy trees they are extremely heavy producers and produce small to medium fruit
which are sweet and mild tasting
red pulp, soft seeds and the pulp is very soft
and the third and final variety of guava we will be looking at today is my
favorite guava variety the White Arabian guava now this grow into a large tree as
you can see here one of the largest trees not dwarf by any means but the
fruits that it produces are absolutely delicious it produces small to medium
fruit but the fruits have a soft skin and soft flesh and they are white and
they're very sweet one of the sweetest guavas I've grown and for flavor I don't
think there's any guava that tastes better than this guava variety
if you like sweet guavas if you like guavas that are soft that have soft skin
and soft flesh and soft seeds you will love this guava variety it's got this
hint of very unique guava flavor to it which makes it so nice now pruning is
one thing that you would need to do for your guava plants especially large
plants like these in the winter season you can trim the canopy to a manageable
size and what will happen then in the coming months the treet will start
sending out newer shoots to fill in the canopy now there is one reason why you
should prune the trees and the reason is to easily harvest the guavas that are
growing on the trees
so as you can see here in the month of march
we have a lot of new shoots growing
and the tree will continue to grow through the
spring season and it's about in the late spring or the summer season that it will
start producing flowers and blooms to produce fruits for the next fruiting
season so as you can see here in September the plant has grown almost completely back
to where it was and it has produced a lot of these guavas as you can see here
beautiful looking guavas and are very delicious as well now the White Arabian
guava does not produce a lot of fruits but whatever fruits it produces are very
nice tasting
so let's go ahead and open up one of these guavas the white arabian guava fruits
show you how it looks like so very soft flesh there are a few seeds but not a lot
at least not as much as the Mexican white guava but as you can see here
very soft fruit the seeds are there they are medium soft I would say not very
hard not very soft either white flesh that's very juicy very flavorful so to
summarize the white arabian guava tree grows into a very big tree and must be
pruned, it is a medium producer that produces small to medium sized fruit
which are extremely sweet and have an excellent flavor they have soft seeds and soft
fruit or the pulp which is white in color so in general for any guava variety
that you grow you need to fertilize the plants every three months you can use the
same schedule that I had discussed for other fruit trees for insect control you can
spray with mineral oil
although I have not seen guava trees being affected by any insects at all and
then you can prune every two to three years to maintain the size of the
plant which is very important for you to pick fruit easily and then if you're in
colder areas make sure you grow them in containers they grow well in large
containers and the guava plant does not tolerate frost so make sure that you do
not leave it out in the cold during a freeze so there we have it folks
that was our episode on growing the three guava varieties I hope you enjoyed this
episode and I'd like to know from you if you grow guavas or do you like to eat guavas
and are looking forward to growing guavas in your garden do let me know your thoughts