WHITE GUAVAS

When I first tasted our tree-ripened White Guavas in the early 90s, Kerns Nectar came to mind. The flavor profile was very similar, but it wasn’t syrupy like the 70s beverage; it had a firm softness that was really pleasant to bite into and it’s flavor was pleasantly sweet & strong yet not overpowering. Its skin was thin and delicate and the fruit was 100% edible, skin, seeds & core. And its scent was lovely; while not overpowering, it would make itself known in any closed room or refrigerator.

We grow these in Santa Paula and harvest them from December through March. Many non-Western cultures like to eat unripe White Guavas while they’re quite firm. And this is how they’re purveyed in most Hispanic and Asian grocery stores, super hard and not at all fragile. We, however, allow ours to tree mature & ripen. And while this increases fruit fragility & perishability and necessitates gentle handing, the result is a perfect biting texture and a beautiful flavor & aroma that screams “guava”. This enhanced guava experience is what our Farmers’ Market retail customers have come to expect, as do many of our chef & mixologist clients.

Another Brokaw White Guava anecdote involves juice. Many years back, we opened up my Juice Man Jr and blended bunches of grapes and maybe 3 guavas. The juice that resulted had a delicious flavor that was completely overpowered by the guava. While my preference is to eat a lot of them, small amounts of White Guavas can go a long way.

PASSIONFRUIT

Some of you might know that our Santa Paula ranch was hit hard by the Thomas Fire in December of 2017. We ended up losing 50% of our avocado groves and, while we started to implement a 5 year avocado replanting plan, we wanted to grow something in the interim that would begin producing more quickly. We decided that passionfruit was a viable candidate, we promptly planted some in one of the heaviest hit burn areas and, sure enough, it wasn’t long before we were able to start harvesting them. We post an interesting picture of them at our Farmers’ Markets, showing how we planted them in a burned out avocado block and used the deceased avocado tree-stumps to support the trellis wires.

Passionfruit are wildly popular with our retail & restaurant clients yet I find them quite odd. My wife adores them and, while I like them, they’re just too difficult to eat. And they’re light in weight, as the pulp shares the space inside the thick shell with air. I really like that they’re so durable & not fragile but I find assessing individual fruit quality difficult. But I guess the magic all happens in Santa Paula, and not where we pack them in Watsonville, as our clients and my coworkers really love them.

The passionfruit harvest starts in November and lasts into April.

HAYWARD KIWIS

This is an unusual fruit for us. It’s deciduous, meaning that it loses its leaves and goes dormant in the winter. And the crop is ideally harvested all at once and sold out of storage. Unlike virtually every other non-deciduous fruit type that we grow, a Hayward Kiwi needs chill time in order to go dormant & set fruit; this why we grow them at our Soledad ranch.

Kiwis will ripen most reliably when harvested at a 6.5% sugar content and while still firm. Ripening performance decreases if harvested with more or less sugar and, if left to vine-ripen, the fruit will first shrivel and then soften unevenly.

Kiwis flower later than do most types of deciduous fruit and the 6.5% sugar content is usually reached in late October or early November. We will then harvest the whole acre, put them in a refrigerator with an ethylene filter and then remove them for ripening and purveyeing incrementally over the proceeding 3-4 months.
We are so fortunate to be kiwi growers. In my opinion, they’re the best tasting fruit available in the winter and early spring, only to be challenged by the finest mandarin varieties. And the Hayward variety grown on the central coast is the absolute best. Most California kiwi production is concentrated in the northern San Juaquin Valley. Given that they hang until late October, valley kiwis are subject to extremely hot temperatures right before harvest. This, however, isn’t the case with kiwis grown in the much cooler central coast. Our kiwis, and those of our fellow growers in the area, are noticeably more healthy feeling, ripen more nicely and boast a superior juiciness, texture & flavor.

We normally purvey our kiwis starting in December and continue until they run out in March or April.

OTHER SANTA PAULA SUBTROPICAL TREE-FRUITS

We grow many varieties of Cherimoyas; I couldn’t tell you after harvest which variety is which. Like avocados, Cherimoyas are harvested while firm and ripen off of the tree. We don’t grow that many and carry them on & off from December through April.

We also grow super delicious California Mangos. While not quite as sweet as the imports, they still have lots of sugar, ripen beautifully and have a perfect texture with no strings; in my opinion, this might be the tastiest fruit that we grow. Since we can fast track them to our clients, we are able to tree-mature them to a degree that isn’t an option for their imported counterparts; this really enhances their strength of flavor & edibility. We harvest these July through September.

We had a couple of seasons with small amounts of delicious, freshly harvested lychees. They were so nice to peal, so delicious and so popular. Unfortunately, the few trees that we had were heavily damaged by the fire. We have a couple of producing trees left and will plant more very soon. The lychee harvest window is September & October.