If they don't have a cultivar name prominently advertised then they are most certainly seedlings.

I think in your case you'll probably be happier with named cultivars. They will have proven to produce useful fruit and many are self-fertile.

I've had lots of success grafting apple, pear, quince, plum, pawpaws and cherries but had no luck at all grafting feijoa.

The limbs are brittle the bark thin and course. I only tried it one year, perhaps there are tricks to doing it successfully.

I believe someone from One Green World told me that they grow the named cultivars on their own roots. So I imagine they do some form of cuttings. I'd be surprised if they are easy to root like currants, figs and grapes.

If you learn tricks for grafting, please share.

Productive seedling feijoas are tricky business, although I have had recent contact with another Portlander who has some small fruit for the first time in year five on one of four seedlings.

That is twenty seedling-years. Requires patience and probably far more than a couple of plants.

Grafting is said to be difficult, cuttings not so hard, lots of info in the Internet for this subject.

Larry above is likely correct.

I have 5 feijoa plants grown from seeds. They are 4 1/2 years old.

Two of them flowered last year and one of those produced a few fruit, none that are viable yet. Either the plant is a later ripening one, or it is just due to the first year fruiting and being young. Time will tell.

I'd go with the name cultivars if you have a choice. These trees grow pretty slow the first free years and a seedling will, in my example, take 4-5 years to start flowering. If you can buy one a coupe years old, you save some time.

I also think grafting these are tough. My father-in-law in New Zealand grafts all kinds of fruit trees to make wild concoctions in his yard, but I have never known him to graft his feijoas.

Eric - you've seen my yard. I showed you my row of Feijoas that I grew from seed. I don't think I showed you one plant that I bought at a plant sale, sold as a blooming ornamental. It's up in the flowerbed by the house. It wasn't a named variety but it was labeled as a blooming plant and had a company name on the tag (long lost).

The seed came from a tree at the arboretum that fruits almost every year, is huge and the fruit are the size of a chicken egg. I do not remember the fruit being extra tasty but I don't think they were completely ripe. Of the nine seedlings in the garden, they give three types of fruit; some of them are very round, some of them are egg shaped and large, and some of them are small and hard. None of them have much flavor. And I have to hand pollinate in order to get fruit.

But the tree up in the flowerbed fruits every year with half sized fruit, lots of them, no hand pollination required, and they are delicious. I'm tempted to try to graft some of its branches on to my row of loosers down in the garden.

I love the look of Feijoa bushes/trees, but for the amount of space they take up and the hassle of hand pollinating, I think mine are gonna be moved off to the side and something better moved into their spot. I have no idea what that might be.

Oh, and the hardy kiwis had their first (light) crop this fall. I do not regret planting them! so much better than store bought.

> I love the look of Feijoa bushes/trees

Ever since seeing yours, John, I do, too! Gorgeous bushes, and I haven't ever even seen the flowers or fruit yet.

Thanks, everyone for the advice. I guess I will replace my Edible Landscaping seedlings with named cultivars, although maybe I'll see if the seedlings survive a winter in the ground before I spend any more money.

Thanks!

Interesting post by John. Generations of seedlings will rapidly revert to characteristics of the native plants in South America that have round, small and hard fruit. It is a wonder what the first European botanists on the scene saw in it.

So what named cultivars do you all recommend then? I was looking at ordering from Rolling River. They're out of stock on what I'd order now, but I wasn't planning to order now anyway. I think I want to get at least one self-fertile variety so that I can have some fruit even if I have pollination problems. The descriptions of Coolidge, Nazemetz, and Mammoth all sound good.

I ordered a couple of feijoa seedlings from Rolling River (named cultivars were out) and they were pencil thin twigs. I've been happy with everything else from them but that was a joke....

I have COolidge and I like it. We transplanted it and a seedling to our new house. Feijoas don't like to be transplanted, nor do most evergreens. A couple of years of recovery. One real advantage of a selected variety is that they tend to ripen earlier. Here, November ripening is much better than December, because you tend to get killing frosts in December, not November. That being said, our seedling makes delicious fruit and pumped out lots of fruit every year before we moved it. The Coolidge has recovered more quickly from the transplant than the seedling. I would think that you'd get so many more heat units in NC than here that it might not matter as much.
John S
PDX OR