Fig and guava update after covering

1 year ago
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While the idea of covering fruit trees to protect fruit from damaging fruit fly (not quite as much of an issue for the fig, but guavas are badly affected) and birds seems great, it's also not without its downsides.
One of those being that any bugs that were on the trees when they were covered, now have a very protected environment and can thrive and spread without the worry of other predatory bugs or birds getting at them. The assumption is that the trees are covered, so it will be fine, but you do need to keep a lookout for outbreaks of things like mealy bugs or aphids - which I discovered while making this video.
We got some nice figs from the fig tree, but nowhere near as many as the previous season. I've given the tree a good prune now, and hopefully that will encourage a strong fruit set this season.
We did manage to eat a few nice fresh figs and also turned a number of them into fig paste.
The guava, while it wasn't attacked by fruit fly, did produce a good number of fruit, but the fruit were a lot smaller and less impressive than I had hoped. Whether that was due to less sunlight getting to the leaves/fruit because of the cover, or because of whatever those aphid looking bugs took from the energy of the tree, or because it was recently heavily pruned... who knows? I did make a really nice batch of guava puree, which I turned into a guava and orange jelly... as in gelatine jelly... not jam jelly... Jell-O for my friends in the US. That was very tasty and something I will definitely repeat with future guavas.

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