Quick care
Barbados Cherry
Also sold as acerola. Flowers and fruits several times a year, and the fruit carries more vitamin C by weight than almost anything else you can grow.
More flushes while the warmth lasts, often the heaviest crop of the year in September.
What to do
- Keep picking. Fruit left on the bush ferments and attracts wasps.
- Make September the last feed of the year.
- Prune lightly after a flush finishes if it is getting beyond reach.
- Keep watering until the rains stop mattering.
The quick care card
The same three columns as the sign on your plant.
Planting and the first 30 days
- Sun
- Full sun is best.
- Soil
- Well-drained soil is best.
- Planting
- Plant at the same depth as the pot.
- Mulch
- Add 2 to 4 inches of mulch, but keep it away from the trunk.
- Water
- Daily for the first week, then 2 to 3 times weekly for the rest of the first month. Water deeply.
- Feed
- Use a light fertiliser after the plant settles in.
Ongoing care
- Water
- Water during dry weather.
- Feed
- Feed 3 to 4 times each year.
- Prune
- Prune lightly to shape and keep harvest easy.
- Protect
- Protect young plants from hard freeze.
What to expect
- Growth after 1 year
- Often 3 to 5+ feet of new growth.
- Fruiting
- Often in 1 to 2 years, sometimes sooner in warm weather.
- Pollination
- Self-pollinating; bees can improve fruit set.
- Key tip
- This plant can bloom and fruit more than once a year.
Full care
Malpighia emarginata
Several crops a year, on its own schedule
A Barbados cherry does not have a season so much as a habit. It flushes,
flowers, and sets fruit in response to warmth and rain, which in Central
Florida means two to four crops between spring and autumn rather than one
harvest you can put in the diary. A good rain in July will have it in flower
within a fortnight.
That makes it one of the most productive plants in a small garden and one of
the easiest to miss the fruit on. The cherries ripen quickly, soften, and drop,
so the whole trick is to look at the plant twice a week once you see flowers.
What the fruit actually is
Acerola is the reason this plant is grown commercially. The fruit carries
roughly thirty times the vitamin C of an orange by weight, which is a fact
about the fruit and not a claim about anybody's health. It is tart, soft, and
best eaten within a day or two of picking, which is exactly why it is worth
having a bush and not worth looking for in a shop.
Ripe fruit bruises if you squeeze it. Pick by rolling it off the stem into
your hand.
Shape and cold
Left alone it becomes a dense shrub eight or ten feet across. Pruned after a
flush it stays a reachable four to six feet, which is what you want: this is a
plant you pick from every few days, so height costs you fruit.
Cold is the one real limit. Established plants take a light frost with some
leaf burn. A young one in a container is far better off moved against the
house or under cover for a hard night, and a young one in the ground wants a
cloth over it. Do not cut cold damage away until spring tells you what is
actually dead.
Through the year
The four notes we email, all in one place.
Spring
The first flush and the first flowers, usually once nights stay reliably above the fifties.
- Feed as growth starts, the first of three or four feeds this year.
- Shape it now, before the flowers come, rather than cutting off the crop.
- Water through the dry spring. Flowers set poorly on a dry plant.
- Renew mulch, kept back from the trunk.
Summer
Flower and fruit, repeatedly, usually a fortnight or so after each good rain. The main productive season.
- Check the plant twice a week. Fruit goes from ripe to dropped in a couple of days.
- Pick by rolling the fruit off the stem; it bruises if squeezed.
- Feed again midway through the season.
- Water in any dry gap between storms.
Fall
More flushes while the warmth lasts, often the heaviest crop of the year in September.
- Keep picking. Fruit left on the bush ferments and attracts wasps.
- Make September the last feed of the year.
- Prune lightly after a flush finishes if it is getting beyond reach.
- Keep watering until the rains stop mattering.
Winter
Growth stops and the plant does nothing much, which is correct. A hard freeze will burn it.
- Cover young plants when a frost is forecast, and move containers against the house or under cover.
- Mulch over the root zone before the first cold night.
- Do not feed and do not prune.
- Leave any cold damage in place until spring growth shows where the live wood ends.
We are not listing barbados cherry online at the moment.
What goes to the booth and what is on the website are not always the same
thing. Come and see us at the booth, or reply to any reminder email and ask,
and we will tell you what we have.
All care guides
This page is the one printed on your sign as usatree.com/barbados-cherry. It will
stay at that address.
