How to take feijoa cuttings?

My relationship with the Feijoa—often called Pineapple Guava, Guavasteen, or by its proper botanical handle, Acca sellowiana—started with a frustrating mix of admiration and failure. Living here in San Diego, where our coastal influence and Mediterranean climate allow us to grow almost anything, this South American native is a staple landscape plant.

But as a farmer who wants specific fruit qualities, relying on generic nursery stock just doesn’t cut it. I needed to clone my best producer, a bush that yields fruit with a gritty, pear-like texture and a perfume that fills the entire patio.

Ever wonder why that delicious fruit you bought at the farmers market doesn’t taste quite the same when you grow it from seed?

The reality of genetics is harsh; planting a seed from a superior Feijoa is a gamble where the house usually wins. The offspring rarely matches the parent’s fruit quality. That is why vegetative propagation is non-negotiable for serious growers. Cloning through cuttings ensures the new plant is identical to the parent, preserving those specific flavor profiles and growth habits.

Emily Rodriguez

However, I have to be honest with you: Feijoa is notoriously stubborn when it comes to rooting. I once ruined an entire batch of 50 cuttings by ignoring the crucial balance of humidity and temperature, ending up with nothing but sticks and regret.

Here at Exotic Fruits and Vegetables, we’ve found that patience is the single most important tool in your shed when propagating Acca sellowiana. While a tomato cutting might root in a glass of water in three days, a Feijoa cutting is a marathon runner that might not cross the finish line for four to six months.

Timing and Selecting Your Wood

Success begins long before you pick up your shears. You cannot just walk out to the orchard on a whim and start snipping. The maturity of the wood is the primary variable that dictates whether you get roots or rot. You want semi-hardwood cuttings. This means the stem is not brand new, floppy green growth, but it also isn’t old, grey, cracking bark.

The ideal stem for a Feijoa cutting is firm enough to snap if bent sharply, yet still retains a greenish-brown hue and a smooth texture.

In San Diego, my sweet spot for taking cuttings is late summer to early autumn, typically late August through September. By this time, the spring flush of growth has hardened off just enough. I look for stems that are about the thickness of a standard pencil—roughly 1/4 inch in diameter. Anything thinner tends to dehydrate before roots can form, and anything thicker is often too lignified to push out new tissue.

Think of the stem flexibility like a stiff rubber hose; it should give under pressure but offer significant resistance. If it bends like a wet noodle, it is too young. If it refuses to bend and feels like a dry twig, it is too old.

The Setup: Soil, Hormone, and Heat

Do not attempt to root these in standard potting soil or, heaven forbid, garden dirt. You need a sterile, inert medium that drains instantly but holds moisture. My go-to mix is 50% coarse perlite and 50% peat moss (or coconut coir if you want to be sustainable). This mixture provides the oxygen necessary for callus formation while retaining enough dampness to keep the cut end alive.

Never skip the rooting hormone with Feijoa; without synthetic auxins, your success rate will drop from a potential 60% to nearly zero.

You need a strong rooting compound. The standard powder from the hardware store often contains only 0.1% IBA (Indole-3-butyric acid), which is like trying to start a diesel truck with a AA battery. I use a liquid concentrate or a high-strength powder containing at least 3000 to 5000 ppm IBA. This high concentration is necessary to shock the stubborn woody tissue into cellular differentiation.

The Step-by-Step Propagation Process

Getting the cutting from the bush to the bench requires precision. I treat this part like surgery. Clean your workspace and sharpen your tools.

1. Sanitize Your Tools: Wipe down your bypass pruners with 70% isopropyl alcohol. Feijoas are susceptible to fungal pathogens, and introducing bacteria into the open wound is a death sentence for the cutting.
2. Take the Cutting: Snip a 4 to 6-inch section of semi-hardwood. Make the bottom cut at a 45-degree angle just below a leaf node (the bump where leaves emerge). This node is where the highest concentration of natural hormones exists.
3. Remove Lower Foliage: Strip all leaves from the bottom half of the cutting. I usually leave only 2 large leaves at the very top. If the leaves are massive, I cut them in half horizontally to reduce transpiration (water loss) while still allowing photosynthesis.
4. Wound the Stem: Take a sterilized knife and gently scrape a 1-inch strip of bark off one side of the base, exposing the green cambium layer underneath. Wounding the stem stimulates the plant’s natural healing response, which triggers the callus formation necessary for root development.
5. Apply Hormone: Dip the bottom inch of the cutting (including the wound) into your 5000 ppm IBA solution for exactly 5 seconds. Let the excess drip off; you want a coating, not a glob.
6. Stick the Cutting: Use a chopstick to poke a hole in your pre-moistened perlite/peat mix. Insert the cutting about 2 inches deep and firm the media around it to eliminate air pockets.

Managing the Microclimate

Once the cuttings are stuck, the real work begins. You are essentially putting these twigs on life support. Since they have no roots to drink water, they must absorb moisture through their remaining leaves and stored energy in the stem. If the air is dry, they die.

For the home grower without an automated mist system, the “bag method” or a clear plastic storage bin inverted over the pots creates the necessary humidity dome.

You need to maintain 95-100% relative humidity around the leaves. However, the soil should not be soggy. This is a delicate dance. If the media is too wet, the stem rots. If the air is too dry, the leaves drop. I place my propagation tray on a seedling heat mat set to maintain a root zone temperature of 70-75°F.

Our team at Exotic Fruits and Vegetables loves using bottom heat because it speeds up metabolic activity at the cut site while keeping the top of the plant cooler, which reduces stress on the leaves. The heat mat is the engine that drives this car; without it, the cuttings just sit there in neutral.

Troubleshooting Common Failures

I have seen every failure mode imaginable. The most heartbreaking is when the cuttings look green and happy for three months, only to turn black overnight.

The appearance of black, slimy tissue traveling up from the base of the stem indicates Pythium or Phytophthora rot, usually caused by overwatering or unsterile media.

Is it really worth the effort if half of them die? Absolutely, because the ones that survive are gold. But you have to manage your expectations. Even professionals expect losses with Acca sellowiana.

My breakthrough came when I discovered that I was loving them too much. I used to mist them three times a day, keeping the soil saturated. Now, I keep the humidity dome closed but rarely add water to the soil itself after the initial soak. The condensation on the inside of the dome recycles the moisture.

Do not succumb to the temptation of the “tug test”—pulling on the cutting to see if it is rooted will almost certainly snap the microscopic root hairs and reset your progress to zero.

Potting Up and Moving Forward

After about 10 to 12 weeks, you might see new green growth emerging from the tips. This is a good sign, but it does not guarantee roots. Wait until you see white roots poking out of the drainage holes of your pot. That is the only sure signal.

When you confirm rooting, do not just rip the dome off. You have to harden them off. Crack the lid open an inch for a few days, then a few inches, gradually acclimating the new plants to San Diego’s ambient humidity over two weeks.

The transition from the 100% humidity of the propagation chamber to the 50% humidity of the outdoors is the most dangerous period for a young Feijoa plant.

Once they are hardened off, I transplant them into 1-gallon pots using a high-quality potting mix amended with some acidic fertilizer, as Feijoas prefer a soil pH between 5.5 and 6.5.

Why We Do It

Why go through all this trouble when you could just buy a plant? Because there is a profound satisfaction in preserving a specific genetic lineage. Maybe you found a neighbor with a bush that produces fruit the size of a goose egg, or perhaps you have an old bush that is dying, and you want to save its legacy.

As fruit enthusiasts at Exotic Fruits and Vegetables, we believe that propagation is the ultimate act of optimism. You are taking a piece of the present and investing it into the future.

• Genetic Preservation: You keep the exact flavor and texture of the parent plant.
• Cost Efficiency: A $50 bottle of rooting hormone can produce hundreds of plants.
• Self-Sufficiency: You become less reliant on nursery stock availability.
• Gifting: There is no better gift for a gardener than a clone of your best fruit tree.

Taking Feijoa cuttings is not the easiest task in the garden. It requires a specific cocktail of timing, hormone concentration, and environmental control. But when you slice into that first fruit from a tree you created from a mere twig, the gritty, sweet, pineapple-mint explosion of flavor makes every failed batch worth it.

Remember that gardening is a series of experiments, and a failed cutting is just data for your next attempt.

So, grab your pruners, get that high-strength IBA, and give it a shot. The local San Diego soil is waiting for your success story.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.” – Chinese Proverb