Plant Doctor Archive

Rotting feijoa

CAN you tell me what is happening to my feijoas? The fruit develops a large brown blotch on the surface. It only happens to fruit that has fallen under a few of my 10 trees. Maddeningly, the largest fruits are the ones affected. Should I do anything to prevent the rot spreading to the other trees?

I'VE discussed this with several fruit experts and it seems the most likely source of the problem is bruising when the fruit falls to the ground, and the bigger and heavier the fruit the greater the bruising. Skin thickness also varies between different varieties of feijoas, the thinner ones being much more susceptible to bruising, which is possibly why the problem is worse with some of your trees than others.

So what can you do about it? You could try picking fruit from the tree before it falls or try to create a soft landing for them when they do. You could hang netting under the branches to catch fruit or lay something soft like bunched-up frost cloth on the ground beneath. If they are dropping on a lawn, then you could try leaving the grass to grow longer to cushion their fall.

Reproduced with permission from the former Weekend Gardener magazine. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the RNZIH.