Strawberry Guava

What are people doing to manage Strawberry Guava?

In Australia it needs no management, I am not sure what you mean?

Dylan Buetzow wrote:What are people doing to manage Strawberry Guava?

what do you exatly mean buddy?

I guess with strawberry guava you refer to Psidium cattleyanum und by "manage" you may refer to actions that stops this plant to take over the whole property (if I'm mistaken, you should ignore the rest of my reply ). On my land in Thailand (4 rai = 6400 sqm) this specie surely starts to outcompete other plants - its very shade tolerant, grows fast and tall, and the new shaded area of an established tree becomes the breeding ground for at least  another tree and bit by bit this plant conquers more area. Well, in my case (due to the small property size) I simply start cutting the trees. The foliage makes good mulch, and I use the wood for making biochar.

I have seen pictures that strawberry guava forms dense thickets, but this is not the case on my land - they grow as regular trees, which make it easier to deal with them.

Here are some threads that you or others might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/58089/ideas-starting-cuttings-star-producing

https://permies.com/t/140713/Strawberry-Guava-Flowering-Brisbane-Australia


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Hi Dylan,

Welcome to Permies.

strawberry guava is highly invasive in Hawaii. they can easily take over native forests there. maybe it's similar to where you are? I've done work removing them manually by hand, root wrench, and an ax depending on the size. when they're clumped in thickets and nothing but for acres, I've seen a push dozer work well, otherwise you can use an excavator. I've also seen a property that never managed their forest and the strawberry guava leaned and fell over and turned into a network of above ground root systems 3-4 ft high that grew thickets on their backs and are in turn beginning to lean and fall over from the lankiness themselves to start cloning more sprouts. was really terrible to see how bad it can take over and choke out a whole forest.

I think the best way to manage it is just to pull the sprouts before they become a noxious weed to the area, harvest the fruit if you're keeping them, add fencing to make sure wild pigs aren't foraging on fallen guava, make sure you have a system to decompose, burn, or chip any pulled trees as they'll self-propagate wherever. I've seen it being used as woodchips for smoking and bbq, so you could also turn it into a business if you have a lot to dispose.