Help with Guava 'Ruby Supreme' Fruit Quality

[ktorg]

Hello everyone!
I am looking for some help with my air-layered guava 'Ruby Supreme.' I bought it from Logees back at the beginning of the year and it has been growing rapidly ever since. A few moths ago it started to flower so I pinched off most of the flowers as I wanted the small tree to keep growing and not expend too much energy in fruit production. I allowed two of the flowers to stay and set fruit as I was anxious to taste it. They recently ripened and I was excited to try them, but when I cut them open they were not what I was inspecting inside. Instead of the bright pink/red that I was expecting it looked like the pictures that you can see below. It had a very strong odor but not a pleasant taste. Everything that I have read says that ruby supreme is supposed to be an excellent cultivar with superior taste.
 Any idea what could be affecting the fruit quality? The tree was air-layered so it shouldn't be a genetic problem. It gets full sun, regular watering, and liquid fertilizer about every month and a half, and shows no sign of stress or deficiency.
Can I just chalk this up to it being the first fruit set and it will get better with age, or is there something that I'm doing wrong?

Thanks
Kevin

[starch]

Can I just chalk this up to it being the first fruit set and it will get better with age, or is there something that I'm doing wrong?

Hi Kevin,

I think this is the case. I have many guavas from all different kinds of propagation methods (seedlings, airlayers, tissue cultures, grafted) and I find the airlayers and tissue culture plants do not produce representative fruit in their first year. It is still a small plant, give it time!

[pineislander]

I did 25 air layers of these and each one is identical to parent. The plant is only pencil thick and it needs to be up-potted.
They grow very fast When you pot it larger cut back to just below where your first fruit was. They carry enough weight it will become top heavy. As you see they bear on new growth at the tips so a bushy vase form should give you several fruiting branches. But still you will need a larger root zone to feed the fruit.

[FMfruitforest]

 Ruby supreme taste like strawberry smoothie when ripe.  I had some fruit drop prematurely during heatwave in spring.

[ktorg]

Can I just chalk this up to it being the first fruit set and it will get better with age, or is there something that I'm doing wrong?

Hi Kevin,

I think this is the case. I have many guavas from all different kinds of propagation methods (seedlings, airlayers, tissue cultures, grafted) and I find the airlayers and tissue culture plants do not produce representative fruit in their first year. It is still a small plant, give it time!

Thanks, that's good to hear! I am excited to try it in the future!

[ktorg]

I did 25 air layers of these and each one is identical to parent. The plant is only pencil thick and it needs to be up-potted.
They grow very fast When you pot it larger cut back to just below where your first fruit was. They carry enough weight it will become top heavy. As you see they bear on new growth at the tips so a bushy vase form should give you several fruiting branches. But still you will need a larger root zone to feed the fruit.

It's actually about as thick or a tad thicker than a sharpie, the angle and distance makes it look a lot smaller in the picture. I recently up-potted it just a few months ago right before it started flowering heavily so I don't think it needs to be repotted yet.
Thank you for the pruning advice.