GUAVA - MEXICAN CREAM

brad16 says...
Hi Jonesplus1,

I don't know first hand about any guavas (I choose not to grow them), but I do know first hand about the appetites of wallabies (in particular Bennett's wallabies).

There is a very sizeable Bennett's wallaby community around a property where I planted about 5 acres of a 'fruit salad' orchard. Along with the kangaroos, koalas, possums etc. (Australian bush wildlife) they stripped the orchard to the ground over the last couple of years. The current drought conditions have forced them to take extreme measures to get at whatever they can get.

The first to go were the pomme and stonefruit as they produced new buds, and the young bananas vanished overnight like magic. Shortly followed by various annonas, garcinia, kiwifruit, avocado, mango, pomegranate, and others.

Citrus lasted a little longer, along with lychees, longans, wampee and jaboticaba, though I think wampee and jaboticaba only stayed a little longer because of their more obscure location.

Amazingly, the whole lot was stripped bare, except for a small planting of loquats (about half a dozen) right smack bang in the centre of things. The loquats were completely untouched, although I wouldn't be surprised if they too were now gone.

I've abandoned that site for the time being and haven't been back for just over a year. There's not much point starting again under the current conditions.

Depending on how desperate the local wallaby community is, there's nothing short of building fort knox and defending it with an army to keep them from getting to food.

Just looking at pictures of young guava growth, it does look like it would be an option for wallaby fodder, although it seems more spindly than what they'd prefer to eat as it matures. They'll eat everything that isn't woody, not just the leaves.

At the same site, I also planted a re-vegetation corridor along a small creek down in a small valley. The wallabies (et al) also stripped that of various young trees, like carabeens, quandongs, and cryptocaryas. Though they didn't touch any cabbage tree palms (too prickly I guess, though the prickles of the pineapples didn't bother them).

Sorry for not having a definitive answer for your guava, but from my previous experience, it certainly looks like loquats would be a very good choice if wallabies are a problem. They left them alone while demolishing everything else under quite harsh conditions (ie. they were very hungry).