Facts About Growing Custard Apple

Custard apple is easy to grow and easy to maintain. It just needs to have the right soil and weather conditions. Apparently, here in Perth, growing custard apple is not that difficult.

Custard apple is a well-branched shrub or tree and comes from the family Annonaceae that bears edible, white, fleshy, sweet fruit. It can grow from 3 meters (9.8 ft) to 8 meters (26 ft) tall.

Please see more information below:

It needs a tropical or subtropical climate with good summer temperatures from 25 °C (77 °F) to 41 °C (106 °F), and mean winter temperatures above 15 °C (59 °F). It is sensitive to cold and frost, being defoliated below 10 °C (50 °F) and killed by temperatures of a couple of degrees below freezing. It is only moderately drought-tolerant, requiring at least 700 mm of annual rainfall, and will not produce fruit well during droughts.

It will grow from sea level to 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) and does well in hot dry climates, differing in its tolerance of lowland tropics from many of the other fruit bearers in the Annona family.

It is quite a prolific bearer, and it will produce fruit in as little as two to three years. A five-year-old tree can produce as many as 50 sugar apples. Flowers can be self-pollinating but if there will be a lack of natural pollinators, hand pollination with a natural fiber brush is effective in increasing yield.

Natural pollinators include beetles (coleoptera) of the families Nitidulidae, Staphylinidae, Chrysomelidae, Curculionidae and Scarabeidae.

In the Philippines, the fruit is commonly eaten by the Philippine fruit bat (kabag or kabog), which then spreads the seeds from island to island.

It is a host plant for larvae of the butterfly Graphium agamemnon (tailed jay).

( Source – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annona_squamosa)

Interested in growing custard apples? Please check our shop for your planting needs.