Feijoa In Room Culture

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

An evergreen with wonderful aromatic fruits for your indoor greenhouse

More recently, outlandish leathery dark green fruits the size of a small chicken egg have appeared on the markets and counters of Russian stores. This juicy berry, when ripe, tastes like pineapple with strawberries and has a wonderful aroma. Such fruits grow on a plant called feijoa.

By popular demand from readers, I want to tell you about the cultivation of this exotic subtropical tree - and beautiful, and tasty, and aromatic - in room culture. It grows well in rooms. The shoots are light brown, the leaves are pubescent, silvery, it has beautiful flowers with tasty, sweet, fleshy petals; after flowering, small, round edible "cucumbers" appear.

Feijoa is an ornamental evergreen shrub with a height of 2 to 5 meters, the plant is not resistant. Its leaves are glossy above, silver-gray below, small, elliptical in shape. The bush is exceptionally beautiful during the period of mass flowering due to the abundance of bright flowers against the background of grayish-green foliage. Flowers are bisexual, single, up to 4 cm in diameter, 1-4 of them in the leaf axils.

The flower petals are fleshy, edible, white; inside they are pink. Numerous stamens (from 50 to 120 pieces) of carmine color, protruding from the flower, they are much longer than the petals. Even the stipules are colored brownish-red on the inside, and green on the outside. Fruits are berries the size of a small egg or a large plum. They are green, acquire a yellowish color as they ripen, often with a reddish barrel and a rough surface. The pulp of the fruit is dense, creamy white, sweet and sour, melting, refreshing taste with the smell of pineapple and strawberries. The fruits are 4-7 cm long and 3-5 cm wide, they have numerous seeds, small - up to 1 mm long. The skin has a tart taste, but it separates easily from the fruit, so it is usually not eaten. They contain vitamins C and P, 6-10% sugar, 1.5-1.6% malic acid and 2.1-3,9 mg of iodine (in 1 kg of fruit). Due to the exceptional amount of water-soluble compounds of iodine, feijoa is used for the prevention and treatment of thyroid diseases. In terms of vitamin content, it is close to tangerine. The fruits are used fresh and for the preparation of jam, marmalade, jelly, tincture and liquor. They are useful for atherosclerosis and for its prevention.

The genus Feijoa (Feiyoa Berd) belongs to the myrtle family, includes three Brazilian species, only one of them has food value. Distributed in southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and northern Argentina. Europeans have known feijoa for no more than 100 years. In our North Caucasus and Krasnodar Territory, as well as in room culture, only one species is grown - feijoa Sellova. It has many forms. Few varieties are grown in Russia. The varieties Allegro, Coolidge, Superba prevail; domestic varieties Sochinskaya early, Adlerskaya large, Crimean aromatic. Some of them are self-fertile. Feijoa blooms in late May-June. Flowers appear on the shoots of the current year. The fruits ripen from October to the beginning of winter, the plants are cultivated in cold greenhouses.

Feijoa is grown as a flowering houseplant. However, it not only blooms, but also bears fruit, pollination must be carried out artificially. It blooms abundantly, but usually up to 95% of the ovaries fall off. The fruits fall off when ripe, after laying in a cool room, they become very tasty. The plant reproduces well by seeds and cuttings. With seed propagation, splitting occurs. When grown from seeds, plants bloom for 3-4 years, when cuttings - for 22-3 years. Full fruiting occurs from 5-8 years. The average yield from a bush is 20-25 kilograms of fruit.

For indoor cultivation, seeds are sown in spring in a mixture of earth and sand. Seedlings appear in 20-25 days at a temperature of 18 … 20 ° C. Seedlings dive into boxes at a distance of 4-8 cm. Soil composition: 1 part of earth, 1 part of humus, 1 part of sand. Plant care consists of watering, spraying. It is desirable to keep them in a bright place at this time. As the seedlings grow, they are planted in pots with a diameter of 9 cm, and then - 11 cm. In the future, the feijoa is transplanted every two years into large containers. Cuttings for propagation are cut 8-10 cm long from the upper and middle semi-lignified parts of the shoot. After treatment with heteroauxin, they are planted in sand. Cuttings are carried out in November-December.

I can offer readers feijoa seeds for reproduction. I'm waiting for an envelope with a return address in a large format with stamps glued on for 30 rubles, I will send a catalog for orders. Write: Brizhan Valery Ivanovich, st. Kommunarov, 6, st. Chelbasskaya, Kanevsky District, Krasnodar Territory, 353715.