How do commercial guava growers do it?

[gnappi]

In the 11 years I've had guava trees, I have yet to have edible fruit.

Either the little fruitlets fall off, the tree gets infested with scale, the fruit is tasteless, or the fruit is attacked by fruit fly.

I don't think commercial growers are bagging every fertilized flower or spraying constantly. What are they doing to make so many fruits and jams available? Growing them underground? :-)

[Kada]

Most commercial growers here are unfortunately bagging, pruning and spraying.

[JoeP450]

Going to venture out on a limb, but the answer probably lies in lots of pesticides 🤷‍♂️

-Joep450

[behlgarden]

from my observation on growing 8 trees for past 10 yrs, its all about pruning, fertilizing, and watering.

Fertilize in late winter before blooms, here in So Cal, its Feb/Mar to make use of rain to leech fertilizer into soil.
Water regularly, but sparingly. Guavas dont like too much water. best flavor is when fruits are set, water less.
Prune heavy after fruit harvest, I do this in Jan/Feb.

I have noticed in years I did not prune, by yields dropped 70% and quality of guava fruit went down.

[pineislander]

In the 11 years I've had guava trees, I have yet to have edible fruit.

Either the little fruitlets fall off, the tree gets infested with scale, the fruit is tasteless, or the fruit is attacked by fruit fly.

I don't think commercial growers are bagging every fertilized flower or spraying constantly. What are they doing to make so many fruits and jams available? Growing them underground? :-)

I am in SW Florida maybe a zon warmer than you. Guava needs to be very vigorously growing, healthy plants, well fed and well watered. They fruit on new wood, yes you may get some scale, I do but most of it brushes off, and I have to bag every fruit or it would be infested with fruit fly. This summer I had many flowers and fruitlets fall off, I think the problem was lack of fertilization, the plants are real fertility and water hogs.

After my spring/summer crop, and I did get some good ones, I pruned back hard mainly to develop a good framework because these trees were just one year old air layers. The trees did continue to bloom sporadically and I did get some through the summer and they are still ripening. I am emulating commercial growers who are prunng to an open vase form with main branches about 4 feet and new fruit bearing branches easily within reach for bagging and picking. The trigger time for best fruit bearing seems to be when cooler temperatures change to warmer weather, maybe March, April, or May. It seem to me this will be the main crop time.

So, sometime this winter, probably February, I will fertilize, mulch, prune and water heavily to bring on the bloom flush. I have the bags ready. My experience last year was that I put bags on immediately after pollination(I saw plenty of bee activity). Quite a few fruits failed to hold, the small fruitlets fell off. I think I will wait until fruit gets about 1/2 size to bag them. I believe that the bags may have held dew during foggy mornings in springtime and caused fungal infection leading to the fruit drop.
Here is an interesting video showing a commercial operation in Colombia, in Spanish but you can auto-translate or jst observe carefully how they are pruning. They aren't bagging but may be spraying or just tolerating fruit fly for juice production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epk8R4HsYUg
 

[murahilin]

In the 11 years I've had guava trees, I have yet to have edible fruit.

Either the little fruitlets fall off, the tree gets infested with scale, the fruit is tasteless, or the fruit is attacked by fruit fly.

I don't think commercial growers are bagging every fertilized flower or spraying constantly. What are they doing to make so many fruits and jams available? Growing them underground? :-)

I visited a commercial grove in Homestead once they were bagging every single fruit.

[Mike T]

They fruit well here and its warmer than Florida. They are really productive if you fertilise, prune and bag fruit.

[Tommyng]

Gary, my friend has a lot of guava trees in his backyard and he bags all the fruit.

[spaugh]

I mulch, water, and fertilize the crap out of my guavas and they are so loaded every year I have to thin 75% of it off.  They just came into season now.  No bugs get them, just birds here.

[TnTrobbie]

Direct sunshine, fertilizer/ compost and water. They love water. Mabye its the cultivar your growing?

[pineislander]

they are so loaded every year I have to thin 75% of it off.

I forgot to mention if the variety tends to bear in clusters I would suggest thinning down to one fruit per fruiting spur I tried two fruit but they became too big for the 6x9 inch bags and I could not remove them when they swelled up.
bags are $0.15 USD:
https://www.amazon.com/Organza-Drawstring-Pouches-Jewelry-Wedding/dp/B073PZH96D/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=100PCS+6x9+Inches+Organza+Drawstring+Pouches&qid=1571882933&s=hpc&sr=1-1

[mbmango]

I gave up on my guava since the squirrels strip the tree clean while gnawing on the bark of any major scaffolds for dessert.  I took a cutting for a large pot to see if I can "hide" it closer to the house.  That one gets a bunch more bugs but I haven't bothered dealing with it since it's been growing well enough anyways.  It's flowering for the first time, so we'll see if any can survive the rodents next season, but at least it will be small enough that I can cage it if need be.

[gnappi]

I've bagged my fruits as soon as they're out of the flower stage, fertilized, watered (I have as well so it's no concern) and they ALL either fall off in the bags or get fruit fly infestation.

I read conflicting reports that the fruit must be bagged very early in its development stage, AND that they only get infected later as they ripen.

Either way, the few fruits that mature have been inedible.

I've unsuccessfully grown Ruby supreme, "Mexican cream" Barbie pink, and strawberry guavas.

The Lemon guava I have seems to be immune to scale and fruit fly but it's not the cultivar I'm most interested in.

 

[pineislander]

The life cycle of fruit fly is about 14 days from egg laying to pupation with another 14 days for adults to emerge. Fruit formation from flowering is about 90 days. You could try sampling fruit at different stages for infestation but I found that infestation begins close enough to ripening that bagging at about 1/2 grown fruit gave me clean fruit. I sell some fresh fruit and also produce frozen seedless pulp for a smoothie business.

Could you show some pictures of your trees?

[FMfruitforest]

[gnappi]

>>SNIP<< Could you show some pictures of your trees?

Thanks for the reply, other than the lemon and strawberry guava bushes which do spectacularly well with similar care to the last tree, I'm down to one guava tree, a "so called" allahabad. It only fruited once so far in the 4 years it's been in ground but that one green fruit was maggot infested when it dropped off the limb into the bag.

It's not large, maybe 6' tall and lanky despite tip pruning it and giving it regular care. Right now it's in an infestation free and pushing new growth phase after pruning it. Will post pics as it fills out.

[Canvo]

I keep my guavas at 3-4’ tall, don’t fertilise much, throw a net with a zip sewn in over the tree after fruit set. I cannot get through all the fruit these little trees produce

[pineislander]

Here are my 15 guava trees, 1-1-/2 years from air layers. They have one 1/4" spaghetti tube run to each tree and are planted between 1-1/2 year old mangos. I hope to get a few more years out of them before things get crowded. Scattered between are many different edibles, herbs, and short term fruits.

[Frog Valley Farm]

We get multiple crops every year on Ruby Supreme. We don’t have any scale issues. I did just pick some fruit this week that had worms. Our late winter crop didn’t have worms.  The fruit is very sweet and flavorful.  We don’t fertilize our trees as we have a healthy natural system with a biodiverse unmowed living orchard floor of grasses herbs/weeds and legumes.  It is proving to be very productive and low maintenance.  We have consistently been feeding the soil with a large variety of quality carbon inputs (logs to Biodynamic Compost) to reach this point of fertility.   We water Guavas less and less but do as needed. I did spray Biodynamic Prep 500 for the last two days on the entire farm.  We have sprayed BD500 every 4 months for the last 3 years. 

[gnappi]

Frog valley. Thx...

My scale is likely from the humidity and shading. This year I am gonna spray the snot out of the last guava bag early and if no fruit mature I will pull it

[sunny]

They do it with loads of chemicals here.

[Pan Dulce]

I am a professional plant propagator in the central Florida area, and have rooted over 250k guava cuttings since 2016.  From a personal standpoint, I have tried a bunch of cultivars, and will never have a guava tree in my yard.  Total waste of planting space.

[spaugh]

I am a professional plant propagator in the central Florida area, and have rooted over 250k guava cuttings since 2016.  From a personal standpoint, I have tried a bunch of cultivars, and will never have a guava tree in my yard.  Total waste of planting space.

What do you do with 250k guava trees?  Are there that many people growing them in FL?

[shinzo]

I am a professional plant propagator in the central Florida area, and have rooted over 250k guava cuttings since 2016.  From a personal standpoint, I have tried a bunch of cultivars, and will never have a guava tree in my yard.  Total waste of planting space.

Why do you consider a guava tree as total waste of planting space? for the difficulty of fighting fruit fly infestation? or are there other points you are thinking of?

[DSotM]

Is this just a Florida thing? I’m shocked, as my guavas take almost no care in Central Valley in California. Very very hot and sunny summers and frosty winters. Maybe it’s the variety that I have.