Pitomba
Eugenia luschnathiana
Takes drought once it is settled, but not cold — 10°C is the floor, whatever the season.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Yellow
- Sunlight
- Full sun, in a bright greenhouse where the climate is against it.
- Watering
- Water regularly at first; once established it stands drought well.
- Feeding
- A liquid feed monthly, April through September.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- August
- Pruning
- A light prune in late winter keeps the size in hand.
- Overwintering
- Never below 10°C, so heated glass is essential.
- Sep–Oct Flowering
- Oct–Dec Fruit Set
- Dec–Dec Harvest
- Jan–Sep Harvest
- Plant spacing
- 16 ft 5 in
- In-row spacing
- 16 ft 5 in
- Between rows
- 19 ft 8 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow and far-reaching
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 4 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 26–39 ft across, about 2–3× the width of the plant
Almost all of a tree’s roots are in the top two feet of soil, where the air is, and they run out well past the branch tips. The deep taproot most people picture belongs to the seedling; the tree grows out of it and spends the rest of its life spreading sideways instead.
The habit is Pitomba’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly Syrphidae
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Mealybugs
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com