Annona squamosa - the sugar apple

The first time I saw a sugar apple fruit (it may have been custard apples), were during a trip for work to India in 1995. It looked disgusting to me and I wouldn't even try it - it was one of the fruits the hotel staff had left in my room.

Now, 15 years later, I am growing this amazing small tree in my own garden and relish each and every fruit.

The tree is rather straggly, not ugly, not pretty. It struggled to get going at first and seemed to suffer from some nutritional deficiency all the time - yellowing leaves etc. I just frequently fertilized with a fertilizer containing Molybdenum and other trace elements.

My efforts paid off, this year its been producing large perfectly formed sugar apples in profusion.

The ripe fruits are soft and easily open up, use a spoon to scoop out the many seeds and custardy pulp, scrape every last bit off the inside skin ! Then remove the flesh around each seed and spit out the many seeds.

Scoop out the seeds with the pulp

Enjoying the fruits of my labour

With all the hard work, insects, raccoons, squirrels, possums and who knows what else I am competing with, its hard to believe I actually manage to get to taste the fruits of my labour.

Anyway, here's some of the fruits now in season:

sugar apple
pineapple
limes
guavas
pomegranates

If I had to choose the most successful of these, I would have to say sugar apple, the small tree took 3 years to really come into bearing, but now we've been eating quite a few sugar apples daily for the last week or so.

So, if you live in a warm enough area, plant a sugar apple already !

Update on growing myrtaceous fruits: Eugenia uhalva added to unsuccessfull list

My third attempt at growing Eugenia uhalva has failed.

Each attempt took 6 months. The seeds are extremely difficult to germinate, then grow slower than anything I've ever seen, then just when you think , ok its going to grow its first real leaf, the shoot withers and dies.

Just to make matters worse, a second shoot may emerge a few weeks later, only to suffer the same fate after weeks of anticipation. All in all, about 6 months of wasted time per try.

If anyone succeeds in growing it, I'd be interested to find out how.

Caught in the act: Caribbean fruit fly

Caribbean fruit fly on green guava

With the recent outbreak of Mediterranean fruit fly here in Palm Beach County, I've been worried about the fruit flies in my own yard. I really wanted to make sure they were not med fly.

Today, I set out with my camera stalking around the variegated guava. I had no problem spotting them, there were many of them all over the guavas ! I don't know if the variegated guavas have a very tough skin, but so far only a few of them have been infested with very small larvae.

My pictures confirm these are Caribbean fruit fly, the bane of every South Florida fruit grower.

I was ably to squash the last one while it has its ovipository inserted, even when it was dead, and I tried to pull it out, it broke off inside the guava. This means they have very sharp nasty ovipositories and explains why they infest so many fruit.

Squashed Caribbean fruit fly with stinger caught in guava

Update: Strawberry guavas deemed unfit

I had to make a decision and fast. Every single strawberry guava is infested with Caribbean fruit fly worms. The fruit flies are now also targeting my other guavas, I frequently spot them with their ovipositaries piercing the fruit, laying their eggs.

After much deliberation I finally made the decision to remove the strawberry guavas. I really hate doing this, especially after waiting more than a year for them to grow and fruit.

The plants themselves are really pretty and ornamental, I am running out of space to plant the edibles I still want that are trouble and disease free, so these two plants had to go. I have learnt my lesson, from now on, only fruit-fly resistant fruits.

I am thinking more and more to just concentrate on the fruit we all really like: mango's.  I will have to concentrate on the condo mango's as space is definitely an issue, I am thinking of getting some early cultivars, Florigon and maybe Choc Anon, which is supposedly a miracle mango as it fruits from November - January. The earliest cultivars all fruit late May - June.