I have had some feijoa leaf spotting up here in Portland, Oregon, but they are not large spots, more of a speckled appearance. No bad results from the spotting here. You might need to search for more local advice. I looked at a Wellington monthly climate chart and you are way less extreme in temperatures, and higher in humidity, than here. My plant does tolerate a fair amount of wind.

I've got young feijoas in my garden, and I'm in Wellington, NZ. I will have a look and see if there are signs of disease - if I have something similar then it might make it easier to identify.

If it was a root problem, the plant would probably be wilting (despite having enough water). I think that this is probably a leaf fungus based on your description. It is quite likely that the plant had it when you got it, just not so obvious. It may be made worse by the plant being in a protected environment in the greenhouse, although the weather lately has been encouraging to fungal disease. Unless you see the black leaf spots obviously getting larger and joining up, it is probably something that the plant can live with. If it was a root problem, it would be worse.

In general feijoas don't have too many problems, so I wouldn't be too concerned. If you can, get it outside so there is more air movement - hopefully not gale force winds though. While feijoas are considered wind-tolerant, they aren't "Wellington wind-tolerant". Try and protect it a bit, especially from the southerly, which is the more damaging wind to plants.

Also, don't overwater - if the drainage is good and there isn't a saucer underneath, overwatering probably won't be an issue, just don't let the pot stand in water. Don't overfeed as that can make plants vulnerable to disease as well.

While I'm greatful that Wellington doesn't have the temperature extremes of North America and Europe (and I'm especially grateful not to be in the snowstorms I've seen on TV lately), Wellington is having pretty extreme weather right now. My rain gauge recorded more than 80mm of rain over the weekend, with gale force winds and temperatures more typical of winter. Unfortunately, it's just a bad growing season for everything except fungi, and there is a lot more disease around.

I've attached a link to my garden blog in case you are interested. It is largely just my personal record of what I plant and what I eat from the garden, but you might find something useful there.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wellington edible garden blog

Hi Jekyll,

Fantastic - thankk you so much! :-)

The Feijoa was originally outside, but the gales seemed to be taking off not just the leaves but also some of the smaller tips of the branches (either that or something has been having a nibble!) so I brought it (and my olive, which was having its olives taken off...) inside the greenhouse until the worst of the weather had passed. Now that we seem to have a bit more sun, I'll take them both back out (and probably ping-pong them for a bit until the weather remembers that it is supposed to be summer!)

If it was a fungal disease (I will keep an eye on the spots), is it better just to remove the infected leaves, or does the whole plant need to be sprayed?

Thank you also for the blog link - I will have a good read :-) Having recently moved from the UK to Wellington, I'm still learning what can and can't grow here!

Well, I've taken a look at my feijoas - no black spots, but the flowers were very mouldly on one of them. Seems to confirm my theory about the weather being good for fungi, as I've never seen mouldy feijoa flowers before.

If only a few leaves are infected, it is probably worth removing the leaves, but I'm not too sure since it will depend what it is. I don't usually spray anything except as a very last resort, so I'm not sure what your options are for that. It may be worth taking a leaf into a garden centre. They can be a bit variable in the quality of advice, but if it is something common, they should know.

Based on the advice in my UK gardening books, you will probably be pleasantly surprised what you can grow here, especially if you can find a sheltered spot. The mild winters mean that vegetables that are frequently sown in spring in the UK (eg broad beans) can be overwintered so you get an earlier crop. However it is still cold enough to grow the usual berry fruit (raspberries, currants etc). The wind is a huge problem though, and the rather unstable seasons (for example the burst of winter over the weekend) can cause problems with ripening some things.

Thanks for the hint on the gardening centre (now I'll need to find a decent one out here in Lower Hutt... We got the tree from the Warehouse's garden centre, so I would barely trust them to be able to say that it was a plant!)

If I did remove the leaves, it would probably have to wait till it got a bit bigger, on a closer look, about half of them have the black spots :-S Will keep a very close eye out to see whether it spreads.

Oooh - very excited on the gardening - I'm a bit restricted at the moment as I only have a greenhouse (with soil, rather than all paved over) and pot planting - the landlady won't let me dig up her roses ;-) But since we arrived from the UK in November, I've got spinach growing like wildfire, broccoli (touch wood) starting to win the battle against whatever is eating them and a capsicum that seems to have defied the odds. Oh, and *tons* of blimmin' oxalis!!

I do rarely get moldy feijoa flowers up here in Oregon, during a humid late June spell. It occurs perhaps one year in five.

The broccoli may have cabbage white butterfly - that is what mine get. The good news is, this particular pest is having a bad season. It doesn't like the cold and wet. It may get worse though it the weather ever warms up. There are a couple of options for spraying it that are pretty safe if it gets out of control.

I sympathise with the gardening in rented properties - it's just not the same.

It's definitely been really humid here. We've had a pattern of heavy rain with winter temperatures, then a couple of days later it's sunny and summer for brief spell, but the ground is still quite wet. I always figured the feijoas might be a bit marginal, but I can live with it if they don't produce every year. I just love them so much it is worth waiting for.