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Seed - cooked. The light brown or grayish, ovoid-ellipsoid or oblong seed can be 15 - 50mm long and 10 - 40mm wide. The seed can be ground into a powder and used in making bread, dumplings etc and as a thickener in soups. The seed of this species is considered to be one of the most palatable of all the oaks. Many trees have sweet seeds with little tannin and the seed can be eaten raw or cooked.
In some species, especially many of those classified as 'white oaks', the seeds are low in tannins and have a more or less sweet and agreeable flavour. The seed of most species, however, have a very bitter flavour, due especially to the presence of tannins. In these species there are various processes that can remove or at least reduce the amount of these bitter substances (although other water-soluble substances, including some minerals, will also be removed).
Tannins are water-soluble and therefore the easiest way to remove or reduce tannin levels is by soaking in water. A few different methods are listed:-
A traditional method of preparing the seed was to bury it in boggy ground overwinter and allow the wet soil to gradually leach the tannins. The germinating seed was dug up in the spring when it would have lost most of its astringency and bitterness.
Another method was to wrap the seeds in a cloth bag and place them in a stream for several weeks.
Drying the seed and grinding it to a powder before soaking speeds up the process. The fastest method is to use hot water, by cooking the powder and changing the water several times until the cooking water is no longer bitter. Alternatively, you can use cold water (which is reported to produce the best quality flour). In this case, you soak the powdered seed in cold water for 12 - 24 hours then discard the water. Repeat this process for a number of times until the soak water is no longer bitter.
my specimen
https://postimg.cc/XX71bFv6
maybe I was a bit underexaggerating about 6"
I got mine from a person rarefruit@gmail.com in Sept of 2020-
They might have been free- out of 20 fresh seeds I have 1 plant
I hope this works. My cross eugenia grafting tests did not prove fruitful
Guineense sizing up, first fruiting for me
"Skittles" on Guajava is totally compatible, bummer on no fruit for hybrid seeds!
Cas guava came back from the dead, I will protect it this year. It was under snow last year and almost died...
Fern leaf is SUCH a stunner! It really started to speed up finally.
My latest guava pick-ups from Giant Gecko are looking good, I have pretty good confidence most of these will survive.
Orange flesh guajava loading up HARD. I am not thinning as I want small fruits that ripen sooner.
Skittles guava loaded
Fern leaf, minor leaf, and grandifolium all looking good in full sun
If you want fruit production, I would try to keep it in as small a pot as possible, guavaja tends to need a larger pot but there are plenty of other Psidium spp. that can fruit in even a 3 gallon pot.
Now my guava went into the ground two+ years ago and grew lushly to ten feet tall. But even with good watering and fertilizing it never bloomed or set any fruit.
Then it got pruned to six feet last year in June and grew back again but didn't flower or fruit.
Again this year in June it had grown back to about eight feet tall but no blooms. (This year it did not get fertilized like last year, but got plenty of water.) And it got purned in July back to six feet once more but has grown another foot since then.
Not sure why this guava is reluctant to bloom. It's a Barbie Supreme hybrid.
Any ideas or suggestions?
Fingers X-ed!
Paul M.
==
I went from a 3 Gallon to a 15 this year and it exploded in growth, how many seasons should I wait before going up? I ask because I grew Cantaloupe this year and it took over the drip pan with roots a couple weeks into the growing season. Same with my Passion Fruit, it was in a 3 gallon to a 15 and took less than two or three weeks before the roots were in the drip pan.
Should I up pot my Guava and Passion Fruit if I want as heavy production as possible prior to next spring, or let them establish themselves even longer in the same pot?
It sounds like it seems pointless to try and fruit jackfruit in a container. It’s too bad, it’s such a nice looking tree. I guess it’s next on the chopping block next time I need space.
My Psidium striatulums flowered and fruited this summer for the first time. I probably could have induced fruiting earlier, but I tend not to be as diligent in up-potting plants as I should be. Still, fruiting at three years of age is not too bad considering the shorter growing season I have in north Alabama than in south Florida or their native Brazil. Also, they do not live outside year-round; they only spend Summer (and parts of Spring and Fall) outside since my winter temperatures would certainly kill them.
Their fruits have taken a little while to develop. The above photographs were taken in late August. The fruits had started forming in July. The fruit in the first photograph fully ripened yesterday. The rest are getting close. They spent quite a while small, green, and rock-hard. All told, it was between three to four months from flowering to fruit.
My first fruit was 2.5" long. It did not develop a rich yellow color like some other ripe striatulum fruits I have seen photos of. I think this can be ascribed to the relatively cool late summer and early fall temperatures in my area; I have already had to move my plants indoors, two weeks earlier than usual. Still, the fruit had softened, developed a nice scent, and came right off the plant, so it was ripe. It's flesh did not develop the bright red coloration of nana7b's fruits; it looked like the fruits in Miguel's photos at the beginning of this topic, a nice pink color.
The taste was that of a good guava. It was sweet, though not overtly so. It had very little sourness. There was no bitterness or off-notes or strange aftertaste. The seeds, though still hard, were smaller than in commercial guavas (Psidium guajava) and did not seem to have guava's teeth-breaking quality.
I am quite happy with striatulum fruit and the plant itself. Considering that the fruit of most plants improves with age, I think I will be even happier with them in, say, five years. The plant is also more manageable as a container plant than guajava. My Columbian Red Guava of the same age has not only not produced any fruit, despite being in a much larger pot than my striatulums, but it also requires regular pruning to keep it a manageable size. The only pruning I have done with my two striatulums was on a few branches to give them a better shape. They are much better behaved container plants. Certainly ones that will stay in my collection permanently.
