Guava

Don't let guava go dry from bloom through fruit fill

Once flowers open, water deeply and keep the root zone evenly moist right through fruit development. In a dry spell an established tree wants water twice a week. UF singles out bloom through fruit development as the window where drought stress costs a guava its crop - this is the one stretch the tree cannot buy back later.

Feed guava three to four times across the growing season

Give a bearing tree 3 to 4 applications a year of a 6-6-6-2 or 8-3-9-2 formulation, spread through the growing season. A first-year tree wants a smaller dose every 1 to 2 months, starting near a quarter pound and working up toward a pound per application. Guava fruits on repeated flushes of new growth through the warm season, so the tree draws nutrients continuously rather than in one spring surge.

⚠ Keep grass and lawn care at least two feet back from the trunk, and cap a mature tree at 20 pounds of fertilizer per year. Roots run past the drip line, so heavy lawn feeding and watering nearby reaches the tree.

Micronutrient sprays through the warm months

Spread 3 to 4 foliar nutritional sprays carrying copper, zinc, manganese and boron across spring and summer. Sandy and high-pH soils tie these micronutrients up where roots cannot reach them, so guava takes them in faster through the leaf than through the ground.

Keep guava low and open

Head young trees back at 1 to 2 feet to force branching, and hold bearing trees between 3 and 6 feet with selective cuts. Never let a guava climb past 10 feet. Guava flowers on new growth, so a cut both controls size and induces the next bloom, and an open canopy dries faster after rain, which is the main brake on anthracnose.

⚠ Avoid severe pruning heading into your cold season - the tender regrowth it forces is what a freeze kills. A guava allowed over 10 feet topples in strong wind.

Copper for red alga in the warm wet months

When warm humid weather sets in and reddish-brown spots show on leaves, apply a copper-based fungicide periodically through the season. Cephaleuros algae colonize leaf and fruit surfaces during warm wet weather, and copper is the one material UF names as controlling them.

⚠ Follow the copper label's rate and reapplication interval. Pair it with pruning - opening the tree to light and air movement decreases severity, and is doing as much work as the spray.

Bag each guava at one inch across

As soon as a fruit reaches about 1 inch in diameter, slip a paper lunch bag or a knee-high nylon over it and tie the neck shut around the branch with a twist tie or string. Leave it on until the fruit is near mature size. Caribbean fruit fly does the most damage of any guava pest: the female lays into the fruit and the larvae tunnel through it until it is inedible. A bag is a physical barrier put on at the exact stage the fly starts finding fruit.

⚠ Bagging is the only fruit fly control UF names for the home landscape; for anything beyond it UF directs you to your local UF/IFAS Extension agricultural agent rather than to a spray. Exclusion plus prompt picking is the program here - do not improvise an insecticide on ripening fruit.

Guard guava through the freeze window

Site guava in the warmest corner of your landscape to begin with, and cover young trees whenever a freeze is forecast. A young guava dies at 27 to 28F, and even a mature tree only takes 25 to 26F briefly. Growth already stalls below 60F, so a marginal spot costs you all year, not just one night.

⚠ An air-layered tree killed to the ground can resprout from the base, but it takes 2 to 3 years to come back into fruit - protecting the trunk you have is far cheaper than regrowing it.

Pick pink guava at the color break, white guava still green

Pull pink and red-fleshed guava when the peel turns from light green to yellow, then finish ripening it at room temperature. Pick white-fleshed types like Crystal and Lotus at full size while still green - they are eaten crisp and unripe, not soft. Guava finishes ripening off the tree, so picking at the color break gets you the fruit rather than leaving a soft, fragrant target hanging where fruit flies find it.

⚠ Ripe or green, guava holds only 5 to 7 days in the refrigerator - pick to what you can eat or process.