Ruby Supreme Guava

Psidium guajava 'Ruby Supreme'

fruit

Ruby Supreme is one of the most popular pink-fleshed guavas for warm gardens, valued for heavy crops and an intense, perfumed aroma you can smell across the yard. The baseball-sized fruit turns from green to yellow when ripe over soft, sweet, fragrant pink flesh that is wonderful fresh, juiced, or in paste and jelly. The plant is a fast, tough evergreen that can reach about 10 to 15 ft and, once established in a frost-free spot, flowers and fruits in cycles nearly year-round. It grows easily in the ground in mild climates and takes well to containers and pruning elsewhere, making it one of the most rewarding tropical fruits for a beginner.

✅ Plant alongside

Good neighbors that attract beneficial insects or deter pests

• Sweet Potato — A living-mulch groundcover that shades the root zone and suppresses weeds beneath the open tree
• Marigold — Helps suppress soil nematodes around young trees in sandy ground
• Lemongrass — A fragrant clumping border that helps mask the tree from some pests while sharing the same warm, well-drained site

🛡️ Pest & disease prevention

Proactive ways to stop trouble before it starts — tap a name with an arrow for its full guide

• Caribbean fruit fly →

  The key guava pest - bag fruit, pick promptly at color change, and clean up fallen fruit that breeds maggots

• Guava whitefly →

  Watch leaf undersides, rinse off colonies, and treat hot spots with insecticidal soap or horticultural oil

• Scale →

  Inspect stems and leaves and treat with horticultural oil, pruning out heavily encrusted wood

• Anthracnose →

  A wet-weather fruit and leaf fungus - prune for airflow, avoid overhead watering, and remove mummified fruit

🌾 Harvest & storage

In good conditions Ruby Supreme can begin bearing within a few years of planting, then fruits in repeating 60 to 90 day cycles from bloom to ripe. Pick pink guavas as the skin turns from light green to yellow and the fruit softens and turns fragrant; they will finish ripening on the counter. Harvest promptly and often, since ripe guavas are a magnet for fruit flies and birds. To time crops, many growers prune and briefly stress the tree to trigger a fresh, concentrated bloom.

🥗 Nutrition & benefits

A nutrition standout: about 68 calories per 100 g with a huge 5.4 g fiber and an exceptional 228 mg vitamin C (several times an orange), plus 417 mg potassium, folate, and the lycopene that colors the pink flesh. Guava is one of the highest vitamin C and fiber tropical fruits, eaten skin and all, fresh or as juice, paste, and jelly.