A very exotic and unusual fruit, the cherimoya is a sweet fruit that tastes a lot like a pear and has a soft, smooth texture. Because of its short shelf life, cherimoyas aren't sold in stores, but you can learn how to grow cherimoya fruit in your own garden and enjoy this sweet, exotic fruit! Unfortunately, since they are an exotic fruit, cherimoyas can only be grown in USDA zones 10 and 11 or in a greenhouse. But if you do live in one of those two zones, we highly recommend you plant this amazing fruit as it tastes absolutely amazing!
How to Grow Cherimoya Fruit
While cherimoya fruit are easy to care for, one thing that makes them difficult to grow is fertilizing the flowers. The male and female parts of the flower each mature at different times. Because of this, you must hard-pollinate the flowers by transferring the pollen from one flower to the mature stigma on another.
Planting Cherimoya Fruit:
- Choose a sunny location in your garden and plant to plant in an area where the plant will be protected from strong winds.
- Plant your transplanted tree in well drained soil. Keep the soil level of the tree even with the level of the surrounding soil, and back-fill with dirt removed the from the hole. Do not ammend in any way.
- Water the newly planted tree deeply and space each tree 25-30 feet apart.
- Water young trees every 15-20 days during the growing season.
- Do not water for about 4 months during dormancy in the winter.
- Discontinue watering mature trees once the fruit is fully ripe.
Care:
- Fertilize young trees twice each year with 10-8-6 fertilizer in 6-inch deep trenches dug around the tree at a distance of 5 feet from the trunk. Use 1/2 pound of fertilizer when the tree is six months old and 1 pound when it is a year old. Feed the tree twice with 1 pound of fertilizer in the second year. Switch to 1 pound of 6-10-8 fertilizer for each feeding the third year and increase the feeding by 1 pound each year until you are using 5 pounds of fertilizer at each feeding.
- Prune the tree to two main main lateral branches with angles of at least 60 degrees from the trunk.
So now that you know how to grow cherimoya fruit, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to planting!
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