Feijoa

Tom says...
We have both feijoa and strawberry cattley guava, both used not as a windbreak but as a privacy hedge; and I think the feijoas would be a better windbreak. They both make a dense screen, but the feijoas are a stiffer plant and are less prone to being blown apart by high winds. During a hurricane last year, the soft guava hedge was blown down to the ground (it recovers quickly, though), and the feijoas didn’t even defoliate like the trees did. The feijoas have the advantage over the cattleys of lower cold temp endurance and seem to have the advantage as well when the climate turns hot and dry; we have to irrigate the cattleys then or they droop substantially, but the feijoas continue to make fat fruit even through near drought conditions. The only disadvantage I think you may have with feijoas is that they grow more slowly. So you’d have to invest in larger plants if you want a fast solution (at least they’ll be of fruit-bearing age.) Good luck with the project.

Tom says...
Funny you should mention bamboo – I have some advice about that below. As for the feijoas, the nursery from which we bought ours labeled them as seedlings grown from a mix of Mammoth, Trask, and Nezbeth varieties which came from their hedges. They all look similar to me, and I’ve never found a local nursery which labeled a single cultivar so that I could figure them out as one of those or a hybrid of those. Hopefully, someone with more feijoa knowledge could distinguish the varieties for you and give you some advice on which to buy; but as far as I know, they’ll all make a thick hedge.

Our feijoa hedge abuts a clump of Oldhami bamboo (a timber variety with very tasty shoots). Now I wish I had planted our Common, Balcooa, Black Timor, or Red Shoot Bamboo there instead of the Oldhami because it spreads out from the clump much faster than those others. The others would be a better windbreak too because they’re not so tall and they clump tighter (although Oldhami never gives us a problem even in 100 mph / 160kph wind gusts). In the summer rainy season, I dig up a new Oldhami shoot every few days to prevent them from getting into the feijoa. (We could just mow ‘em, but we love to cook them – so the extra effort is worth it while I’m still able to get at them.) If you mix bamboo in with your feijoas, just know that the bamboo will eventually win the fight for space.

ringelstrumpf says...
Julie that's the advantage in a cool climate!!

Tom says...
So by the time the fruit flies get there, ringelstrumpf's bamboo may have already choked out the feijoas. Problem solved.