When Do Guavas Ripen? A Detailed Guide to Their Ripening Time

The guava is the familiar guava, crisp and tasty, and many people love to eat it, so when do guavas ripen? How can you tell whether a guava is ripe?

1. When do guavas ripen?

Guavas usually ripen around October. Generally, guavas flower and fruit all year round, and there are also fruits from June to August, which are edible but rather sour and astringent. If you want to taste the sweetest guava, you have to wait until October, when it is truly ripe, so October through March is the peak sales season for guavas.

2. How can you tell whether a guava is ripe?

1. Judge ripeness by feel

To tell whether a guava is ripe, place it in your palm and gently squeeze it with your hand. If you find a dent where you squeezed and the fruit feels slightly springy to your fingers, it is ripe; if it still feels very hard and you cannot press it down at all, it is not yet ripe.

2. Judge ripeness by smell

If a guava is already ripe, you can smell it without holding it too close to your nose. This fragrance is very sweet, and if you are familiar with musk, you will find that guava also has a faint musky scent. If the guava is unripe, it has almost no noticeable fragrance.

3. Judge ripeness by color

If a guava is ripe, its skin will gradually change from bright green to a very soft yellow-green. Of course, some guavas simply turn white or yellow on the surface when ripe. If you come across a pink guava, you are truly lucky, because such a guava is a rather superior one.

4. Judge ripeness by the appearance of the fruit

When buying guavas, you can judge ripeness by their appearance. An unripe guava has very fine fibers and a fairly smooth surface, while a ripe guava has coarser fibers that bulge outward, making the surface uneven and giving it a rather rough feel. The rougher it feels, the better ripened the guava is.

5. Judge ripeness by weight

You can also judge the ripeness of a guava by its weight. The better ripened the guava, the lighter it is; that is, of guavas the same size, the lighter one is the better ripened, while the heavier one is not fully ripe.