A lot has been happening.
The Good News:
Since starting the website and sending out feijoas a lot of people have started growing feijoas in the UK and named varieties are now available, see the Grow your own Feijoas – where to buy plants – Feijoas UK page for more details.
The Bad News:
The Feijoa Farm:
On the 1st of February 2021 I lost access to the farm that we were renting to grow the feijoas, the owner sadly passed away in 2020 and his kids didn’t want the farm.
The farm land has been rezoned as part of the West Lothian Local Development Plan and they want astronomical sums for the land, which has put it out of my price range.
A mate I know from landscaping work is in the process of setting up a nursery, he’s moved the plants and keeping them on his land which he thankfully owns. I’d given him some feijoas and plants a few years back and he’s a big fan. Absolutely awful time to move the plants!
At least 50% of the plants sadly died due to being moved in winter and then hit temperatures as low as -15C when they were not rooted to the ground and had sitting snow often over 30cm deep.
My Health:
There’s still no update on when my aorta is getting replaced and the heart failure has moved from severe to moderate severe which is good news. All the info they give you about it is generally based on people over 65 and not 41. This gets annoying as it informs you that the average life expectancy is 2 to 5 years in my severity categories. It really pisses me off, obviously for all the normal reasons but the fact I was given life membership to The RHS when I turned 40, only the year before I was diagnosed with heart failure.
Broken and ruptured vertebrae are still healing, the bone has healed but there’s still pressure on the spinal cord making it hard to walk.
I do not know what this means for me growing feijoas in the future. I will continue to do what I can in my garden and help others, but with my heart the way it is, due to lack of blood flow I often can’t keep a thought in my head, movement can get hard with Dystonia and the compression on my spine from the broken vertebrae.
Hopefully the aorta replacement surgery will help give me back some of the energy, the current thinking is the heart failed due to the amount of pain I am constantly in from Dystonia, which I’ve had since I was 6. They’re still doing A LOT of testing, such as genetic testing with my family, which included getting blood samples sent half way around the world. Very impressed! 😀
Like most kiwis I keep myself fit and eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, which meant I wasn’t a candidate for heart issues and it has really thrown the doctors. Hopefully my healthy lifestyle means I can continue for a few more years, really hope to be back growing or doing something with feijoas in the future.
Sorry if I am slow to respond to emails and comments, I suffer severe carpal tunnel even after 3 surgeries (2xR, 1xL) and my brain currently isn’t always getting enough blood making me struggle to think on many days.
Cheers,
Gav.
Ebay feijoa fruit for sale:
Feijoa – Fresh. *FREE UK POSTAGE* Buy Bulk Save! A delicious fruit for Colombia! | eBay*
Amazon feijoa fruit and other foods:
Fresh Feijoa / Pineapple Guava 1 kg*
21st of April 2021: Thank you all for the kind messages!
I would like to thank everyone that has messaged in after this post about the farm closure and my health.
I came here from the article in the Guardian today having never heard of feijoas before despite my brother living in NZ for over 30 years. I was excited to find they could be grown here and eager to know more. Am gutted by your news especially the reasons behind it and really hope your health takes a turn for the better.
Thanks Sian, I’ll have to have a look for the Guardian article.
Thanks Sian, have just found the article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/02/strange-fruit-how-feijoas-baffled-a-new-zealand-immigrant-and-polarise-a-nation
Obviously I agree with the comment on the Facebook group “They are THE MOST DELICIOUS FRUIT IN THE WORLD!!!!”.
Cheers,
Gav.
Really sorry to hear of your ongoing trials and difficulties. Did you manage to salvage your own Mammoth and other varieties in the move? I’m still wondering whether to try some growing in Manchester. Do you have any more info about Roger in the South East, please? I’m not on Instagram… does he sell them or just grow for himself? Thanks for any info.
Hi Kerry, thanks for the well wishes. I actually kept the Mammoth, Triumph and Gemini in pots in my home greenhouse (about 2.4mx2.4m) as I didn’t expect them to fruit in Scotland outdoors. I have also moved 4 of my own varieties into the greenhouse to see how they go, the first flower buds started to show 2 days ago on one of my varieties and new growth has started on all plants. The ones I have at home outside all still look sad and burnt by the frosts.
I’ll update more about Roger as he gets going. He’s had a test of 21 Unique and 8 Apollo varieties plus about 100 seedlings from his own fruit growing for the last few years. His plants start growing and flowering about a month earlier than up here in Scotland, his fruit have longer to mature than in Scotland and taste fantastic. Hopefully have them for sale within a few years.
Cheers,
Gav.
Dear Gav,
I’m so sorry to hear of all the life events you are having to cope with – both the loss of the farm, and your health challenges – and the death of so many of your beloved plants. That must have been heart-breaking.
I was struck by what you said about having had Dystonia since you were 6 years old. A friend of mine has neck Dystonia and after trying many things found relief using a massaging tool. I hope you don’t mind me posting her 9m YouTube video about this, in case it is of help to you or any other people who read your posts and might have or know of someone who has Dystonia. If you would like to be in touch with her, let me know and I will ask her. This is her video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZxVnqGBgcw
Thank you very much for all the work you have done growing this lovely fruit. I had never heard of it until a NZ friend mentioned it in a message yesterday (a fan, of course!) so now I’m on a mission to track one down. The flowers are amazing, too. I wonder if I could grow one in Cambridge. Still quite cold …
With my very best wishes. I’ll be seeing my friend tomorrow, so if you would like to be in touch with her, please let me have a WhatsApp number or email address, or something, for me to pass on to her to be in touch (or if she agrees I can pass on her details to you, so you can be in touch if you want to).
Jeannet Weurman,
Cambridge
Dear Jeannet, Thank you for all the well wishes and I am interested in the massage tool, I used to be the organiser for the Dystonia Society Edinburgh group and this will be very helpful for my friends with Cervical dystonia. My Dystonia is Generalised Dystonia, I have it in my torso, both arms and legs. The dystonia spasms often rupture my tendons off my ankles. From about 12 I’d spend 2 to 8 hours a day walking back and forth in my parents hall or garden to correct my walking, even now I try in the garden most days, there’s quite the dip in the lawn where I walk back and forth between two chairs.
For feijoas the best way to have them is once they fall from the tree, the ones not grown in the UK are picked about a week early to ease travel, they usually have a more bitter taste than the sweet flavour of the freshly dropped feijoa. If you do happen to buy some Colombian grown ones the best thing to do is if they are quite firm fruit is gently let the fruit drop from 30 to 60cm and then leave them for a day or two to get the sugars producing, it will give you the closest to the real taste of a freshly dropped feijoa.
I’ll drop my email address in a private message.
Cheers,
Gav.
Hi Gav – sorry to read of the loss of your farm – I hope you still get to visit and tend to your plants sometime soon! The work you have done to promote these little fruits in the UK is something you should be really proud of. Take care. Martin & the Greyhound.
Thanks Martin, I’m so glad to see more feijoas being planted around the UK, hopefully Brits will get the feijoa bug.
Cheers,
Gav.
Hi Gav, I”m so sorry to read about your farm. And your health 🙁 How’s it all been the past few weeks? My trees are still growing in London. I really would like to plant a whole more somewhere though. Do you have any location recommendations at the moment? I”m wondering if this Rog you speak of is on Instagram? I thought I recognised his name as one of my followers/followings but can’t see him. I’d love to get in touch with him. I also just tried to buy another mammoth and triumph from burncoose but see they’re out of stock until sep 2021 or something . Hope you’re okay. I might be round your way sometime visiting a kiwi friend in Edinburgh
. I could swing by and introduce myself to you guys if you’d like…if you’re up for visitors . Won’t be for a couple/few months 🙂 Nat (we’re on instagram too )
Will drop you an email 😀
Hello nat, did you manage to get the contact of this Roger? I am also very interested in getting in touch with him. Bert.
Hi Gav,
That is some blow losing the Feijoa Farm – thank goodness your mate could help save some. Really hope now that the pandemic is easing your surgery won’t be far away. Your fellow Feijoa farmers need you!! We’ve got 15 (well, maybe 14, one’s just curled up and dropped most of its leaves) ready to start planting in the ground – a very scary moment. I just hope I can channel some Gav.
All my best
Sharon (Muddy Meadow)
P.S. Just purchased Puppies for Sale
Hi Sharon,
Great to hear you’ve got some feijoa plants. The 15th may survive, had a few completely lose their leaves and then start to sprout from the trunks later in the season. If it does happen and the new growth comes later in the season it’s worth protecting it and next year it should be back to normal.
Thanks for buying Heather’s book, I really hope you find it a fascinating read.
Cheers,
Gav.
Hello feijoa lover, I’m really struggling to get an hand on feijoa cultivars, I have 7 different varieties ( apollo, mammoth, Gemini,unique, triumph, Coolidge,Marian)but the best ones can only be found New Zealand. Any help would be appreciated. I which you a good recovering. Greetings from France. Bert.
Hello, have you ever had or do you have a dental amalgam filling/s? It can affect one’s heart. If you have: need to carefully replace with white filling/s and urgently chelate with DMSA and then do a lot of B12 vitamin (in hydroxycobslamin form). Let me know, because I am doing research.
Hi Katherine, thanks for the information. As far as I know I haven’t had amalgam fillings I am seeing my dentist soon and will ask, I do have a gold crown in place. I take B12 daily as my father suffers from lack of B12 but not sure it’s in hydroxocobalamin form.
Looking into family history at least 3 of my grandfather’s siblings died from aortic root split which is what mine possibly would have ended up as due to an embolism of the aorta pushing my aorta out to 7cm, average is 3cm. Thankfully the surgeon was able to use the ventricle valve tissue to fix my left ventricle valve he spent 6 hours working on it instead of just putting a mechanical valve in.
Cheers,
Gav.
Hi Gav
I hope your health has improved.
I lived in nz for over 6 years and was addicted to feijoa.
A few weeks back, whilst holidaying in France I found some very well priced feijoa trees and bought them back to Devon.
They have started to look a bit crispy and unhappy, but I have put them in better soil and mulched.
I’m hoping they recover well enough to fruit in a few years.
As we are planning to move, I have put them in large pots.
I will send you some pictures.
See what you think. As the Devon climate is quite similar, I’m really hoping that they do well.
Best wishes,
Almond
Hi! I don’t know if this is still active… I’m a kiwi (from the Waikato) living in Yorkshire. I planted my tiny feijoa trees (2 of them) in 2020 and I’m still waiting for flowers… they’re growing & they’re healthy, just no flowers… do you reckon I’ll get flowers this year? And maybe even some fruit??
I hope you’re doing well, and this message finds you healthier than in previous posts I’ve read.
😊
Hi Milly, great that you’ve got yourself some trees. Waikato is a lovely part of the world.
To me it sounds like they’re probably seed grown plants, seed grown can take anywhere from 2 to 5 years to produce the first flowers. They may still flower this year, but generally this time of year is too late to produce fruit. You really want the flowers on the plant from May through late July. I personally remove any that appear from Mid-August onwards, as up here in Edinburgh they never have a chance to grow to fruit.
Thanks very much, still struggling with the health, loads of physio. Hopefully one day things will be back to normal.
Cheers,
Gav.
Sorry to hear of your loss of farm Gav,
I would like an allotment here in hull and have some feijoas growing on it.
I hope your healt improves in time and am glad to hear you saved your mammoth and other feijoas.
Take care and i hope to read more later.
Christine.
Hi Gav,
I have just seen your website about Feijoas and am sorry you lost your farm. I hope you are well. My sister died in April from an Aortic Root Dissection at the age of 68. It was a shock as she had not been ill and was found sitting in front of her computer with her lunch on her desk.
I have a Feijoa and have been trying to get it to fruit for a few years. I live on Hayling Island on the South Coast and would have thought that the warm weather would be ideal. Every year, it is covered in flowers but they do not turn into fruit. I have tried going round with a paint brush but still no fruit. There are still a few flowers left on the bush and a couple look like they could be fruiting but don’t hold out much hope with winter approaching. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Sue, so sorry to hear about your sister.
Speaking to doctors up here in Scotland they are in early talks to start scanning everyone over 50 for aortic rood dissection. After it looked to be a hereditary condition in my family, most of my relatives have gone for tests, they seem to be all fine. I seemed to have taken all the dodgy genes from both sides.
Possibly it is not a self-fertile variant, this happens quite a lot especially in older varieties. A second plant may be needed, an early flowering/fruiting plant such as Gemini may help. I try to keep this page updated with where to get plants especially named varieties: https://feijoas.uk/2020/02/19/grow-your-own-feijoas-where-to-buy-plants/
If you prune the plant, stop for 1 to 2 years and see if you get flowers earlier. Mulching heavily 5cm thick about now will keep the roots warmer over winter and be ready to start growth earlier in the new year. This is helpful but can mean frost burn from later frosts if the plant is covered in lots of new growth.
Hope that helps and you get fruit soon!
Cheers,
Gav.
To be fair, I’m here because I just had a nostalgic desire to search for feijoa having been back in UK (2014) following 15 years in NZ. In the north island, Feijoa grew all over the place and I often plucked a few to scoop out and I remember the taste most fondly. The idea of creating a farm here in UK is excellent and our climate now isn’t too different from that in North Island NZ. Very doable to grow these. They grew all over the place in many gardens.
So sorry to hear of your health issues which puts things into perspective. I wish you the best you can possibly have at this time. At 71 YO, I understand the physical challenges so I have much sympathy for your issues. Regards, Gary
Thanks Gary, you are spot on, you pretty much can’t take a step in some gardens in NZ without stepping on a feijoa. I miss it.
The climate is getting very close to NZ, friends down in South East have a few 100 trees and they’re growing great. Scotland can still be hit and miss, lost about 90% of the 2022 crop due to a hard early frost. Trees are growing well this year, hoping to have a new location for them this year. I have just come in from potting up over 20 that outgrew their pots. Also been getting new seeds growing from Scottish grown fruit and more seeds coming from NZ.
I managed to get all the dodgy genes from both sides in my family causing all the health issues. Heart problems from my mum, dystonia from my dad. Seems they skipped generations, neither parent or any of my siblings got the dodgy genes.
Hopefully have a lot more feijoas in the next few years and your health is a best it can be for as long as possible.
Cheers,
Gav
Hi Gav
I’m just outside Edinburgh (Danderhall) and have been growing a single Feijoa tree for a couple of years, no fruit yet but I suspect it’s still getting established, and is probably not in an optimal spot. I’m hoping our climate isn’t too cold for it to flower. Reassuring to hear that you’ve had some success this far north. I’m not a Kiwi but spent a bit of time over there when I was younger, on my big overseas experience. Good luck with your ongoing health problems and rehab. The garden can be a therapeutic place.
All the best
Nick
Hey Nick,
Great that you have a plant, they’re an amazing fruit. This year has been a shocker! Only really started flowering in late August and still flowering here, although my plants are in heavy shade since moving them. That’s about 4 months late and probably starting to flower in NZ at this time of year. I’ve started about another 400 plants this year.
Thanks so much for the well wishes. Rehab is going well, still struggle to speak and head bobs like crazy, Edinburgh is a fantastic place for helping cardiac patients, felt very lucky to be in this city.
Hope your plant flowers and fruits soon.
Cheers,
Gav