Feijoa - growing in the UK

[ldsau93]

Morning all. I planted Feijoa seeds last year and now have a number of healthy plants which will need planting out in the next 6 months or so. Does anyone else have any experience or success with Feijoa? For those that don't know them, they are fairly well known in NZ where they are grown for their fruit.
Many thanks in advance.

[hop-a-long]

Hi there,

I've been trying to find out more about feijoas here too for the last few years, I can't believe the fruit are completely impossible to find here! They are so delicious when in season in New Zealand - and easy to grow too!

Good on you getting seeds to grow,
I tried seeds from T&M a few years back but they didn't germinate for me. Later on I found someone selling tiny plants on ebay, three named varieties - triumph, mammoth and coolidge. I bought one of each variety two years ago and planted them in 10 litre pots at the front of my greenhouse. They stay out in summer but I bring them in in wintertime just to be safe. I had a few flowers that set fruit in their first year but they didn't swell up to a proper size. This year they were really really late to break dormancy, I was afraid they had died over winter but eventually they came into leaf. There were a few flowers again but no fruit this time.
Hopefully next year they will be a bit stronger and with a bit of luck I'll get some tasty feijoas!
Depending on where you are, you could chance planting them outside - I know of a couple of mature feijoa bushes in the south west but as far as I know they don't produce fruit. It may be they are either not self fertile, or they rely on hummingbirds or bellbirds to pollinate their flowers- I cross pollinated my flowers the first year with a paint brush, and it worked anyway.

Best of luck with your seedlings and let us know if you do ever get some fruit!! I'll post back too if I get some!

[Catriona_W]

I’d be interested in hearing how yours do. I also planted a bunch of feijoa seeds last year and have lots of little seedlings. But I guess it’ll be several years before there are flowers and I may never get fruit from them.

[Brack]

I have a feijoa and it has fruited, up in Durham. I found a supplier who sold a variety named 'unique' which is self fertile. It fruited a couple of years back, I overwinter it in the greenhouse, but it got hit really hard and suffered a lot of dieback the winter after. I've been nursing it a bit since and it has flowered loads this year, so hopefully more fruit to come shortly.

Not sure about the taste yet though...

[TrixC]

I’m in London and have three feijoas growing in pots, varieties Unique, Triumph and Mammoth. I get some fruit every year but it’s much smaller compared to what I’m used to from NZ. It may be they would do better in the open ground but I suspect the main problem is that they fruit so late - my fruit generally ripens in November. Compared to NZ the UK has colder autumns with much shorter days. I also think the cultivars I have are not ideally suited to UK conditions as they are late varieties, in NZ you can get ones that fruit earlier but I’ve not seen them for sale here. Most feijoas are not self fertile, although Unique is. You can eat the flower petals too, although no self-respecting kiwi would bother.

I think they are one of the most delicious things ever, but can be a bit Marmite for some people.