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Plant profile: Pineapple guavas

The feijoa or pineapple guava. Picture: Thinkstock

If you're into food gardens you will be thrilled to know that the pineapple guava (or feijoa), Acca sellowiana, has made an appearance again.

They were hard to get hold of for a few years, which was such a shame because feijoas are great tough little trees. The flower is unbelievably beautiful and the fruit even better.

Do not confuse it with the strawberry or cherry guava; that’s an entirely different family of plants.

Acca sellowiana grows to a small, bushy, evergreen tree that has multiple trunks with markings similar to crepe myrtles. It actually makes a fantastic hedging plant because it is so dense and drought-tolerant once established.

The flowers will knock your socks off: fleshy white outside petals with red petals inside and bright yellow stamens. What’s more, they taste great and look spectacular in a salad.

But wait, there’s more. The fruit is green and oval-shaped, staying green when ripe, and highly aromatic. Inside you will see off-white jelly pulp that tastes a bit like pineapple. When the fruits are ripe in late summer or autumn they will start to fall from the tree, pick them then and bring inside to ripen.

If you want your feijoa to crop well, I would suggest planting two trees; sometimes pollination can be tricky. Triumph variety needs Mammoth as a pollinator but Mammoth is partially self-fertile.

Acca sellowiana is pretty trouble-free and not fussy about soil but needs heaps of manure and regular fertilising. Start at the end of winter and fertilise through to the beginning of summer.