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andrew_scott77

When is a cherimoya ripe?

Andrew Scott
13 years ago

Hello everybody,

I bought a cherimoya at a grocery store. Forget asking me what variety it is, they didn't say. I picked one out that felt a little soft. Trust me the rest were rock hard. My fruit has some brown on it but I don't think it is rotten I hope! Should I put it in a paper bag to ripen it and do I just wait for it to soften? I hope that this fruit will be edible. I stopped buying them at the grocery store since every one I got was rotten!

Andrew

Comments (16)

  • red_sea_me
    13 years ago

    I treat them like avocados, some give is good, no paper bag, just patience. If it turns out to be bad, try cherimoya.com they sell some excellent CA grown fruit. You still need to let them sit for a few days but they ripen nicely. Also have some yummy white sapotes now too.

    enjoy,
    -Ethan

    ps, dont eat the skin or seeds.

  • Andrew Scott
    Original Author
    13 years ago

    Ethan,
    Yeah, I may need to give them a try. My cherimoya did have some give like an Avocado. I cut it open but the flesh was not that soft, it also didn't have a lot of flavor. I can tell if I had waited it probobly would have been much better. I put the 3/4 that was left back in the fridge. Oh, well, I did save the seeds though. Tammy in San Francisico sent me some seeds. I am going to start them this weekend. By the time they sprout and are ready to move outside, it will finally be warm enough again.
    Andrew

  • ohiojay
    13 years ago

    Andrew...ONLY, repeat ONLY buy cherimoyas from the store that says "USA grown". All others are not even worth putting into the compost bin. We wait until the skin turns rather gray looking and does get soft...not mushy mind you, but you can feel a some "give". Most fruit from the beginning of the season seem better than the latter. You might try one more fruit and wait a little longer this time. If it is still so-so, then don't waste any more money on those. Either wait until next year or give Ethan's suggestion of Cherimoya.com a try.

    I will say this about the cherimoya plant. It is a very handsome tree with huge, wonderful looking, blemish-free foliage. Completely outshines my sugar apples in looks. The blooms are enormous!

  • simon_grow
    13 years ago

    When selecting your cherimoya at the store or when picking off your tree, I try to select the slightly larger ones and give it a shake. If you hear a rattling sound, there is a good chance the fruit was picked fully mature and it shouldn't matter if its soft yet or not. I like the slightly larger Cherimoyas because I feel that if all the fruit were picked off the same tree, the larger ones had more time to develope. The larger fruit also tend to be more symmetrical because it was better pollinated and so will have more seeds.

    When selecting cherimoyas that you want to eat soon, select as above and give the fruit a smell, if you smell a nice aromatic cherimoya flavor, that is a good candidate. If you can't smell anything, I wouldn't select that fruit. Fruit that is ready to eat will give to slight pressure similar to a ripe mango or avocado. If you look at the stem, you may also see it begin to seperate slightly from the fruit.

    I like the cherimoya's from Calimoya and also from Cherimoya.com. Calimoya's cherimoyas are grown organically, not sure about cherimoya.com. The best cherimoyas are the ones you grow and hand pollinate yourself. They are so easy to grow and so expensive to buy. I would say that Cherimoyas are one of the best backyard fruit to grow because of these reasons.

    Cherimoyas are one of the few fruit that I would dare plant from seeds. I planted some seeds from an excellent cherimoya I ate about 10 years ago and the seedling produced some of the best cherimoyas I have ever eaten!

    I hope your cherimoya does not dissapoint you but even if it is horrible, please give it another try through cherimoya.com or calimoya. Most grocery store cherimoyas are horrible. Some asian markets do sell excellent Cherimoyas however. Good luck!

  • Andrew Scott
    Original Author
    13 years ago

    Jay,
    Thanks for the advice, I know the sticker said that the fruit was from South America, not anywhere in the US! The fruit did have a little give to it but tasted bland. I have to admit though that the fruit was much better than most I have bought. Maybe I will try ordering next year. I am tapped out right now since I bought 2 citrus this spring plus the avocado. I keep adding trees and then thinking where the hell they are going to fit in the house this coming winter!
    Andrew

  • tammysf
    13 years ago

    andrew. the seeds are from cherimoyas i got from dario at cherimoya.com. they were delicious

  • ohiojay
    13 years ago

    The USA grown fruit I had after dinner tonight was pretty darn good. Sorry to rub it in Andrew!

  • red_sea_me
    13 years ago

    just ate my last 'el bumpo' this morn, bought it and a few others at a farmers market last thurs.....I didn't want to rub it in but since J is leading the way. I've been lucky enough to try Fino de Jete, Selma, Dr. White and El bumpo within the past few months, all excellent and unique in their own ways. I've been enjoying some wonderful Vernon white sapotes too.

    plus I recently grafted some different varieties of cherimoyas and at least one of each type has taken, now to wait for my own fruit.

    -Ethan

  • simon_grow
    13 years ago

    Just to rub it in your face, I went to Lucky Seafood and picked up some huge Cherimoyas, likely Dr. White, very large, relatively few seeds, sweet but with some good acidity. Not the best I've had but good for a supermarket bought moya.

    Hey red sea me, out of all those varieties, which one do you like the most? Can you give us a description? I've tried all those varieties except El Bumpo. Is El Bumpo really that good with excellent acidity and sweetness?

    In my experience, Fino de Jete was good but not as good as what I've read. The Selma I tried was not really red, just a tinge of rusty reddish color next to the skin but thats it. The flesh did have some good acidity but its not exceptional. Dr. White was sweet, smooth, juicy and unlike what I've read, there was good acidity, not exceptional but pretty good.

    My favorite cherimoya was an unnamed hybrid cultivar that calimoya grows. Calimoya asked me if I wanted to try their special cross and I said sure. It was good size about softball sized or slightly larger, the skin was not bumpy, the flesh was the smoothest silkiest I have ever eaten and the flesh was sweet with perhaps the best acidity I have ever eaten.

    I hear that El Bumpo and Honeyheart are both excellent but have not tried these varieties yet. Anyone have any experience with these cultivars?

  • ohiojay
    13 years ago

    Ethan...my Pierce graft is blooming now. I believe it is El Bumpo on the other part of the plant, not blooming but growing nicely. The Honey Heart I recently grafted is flushing out so I'll have 3 varieties on the one plant. I've been pollinating the flowers with pollen from my sugar apples...since the flowers change from female to male and drop their pollen & petals so fast.

    The Honey Heart that is flushing is also trying to send out a few blooms as well. I should probably remove them now that the flush has a good start. I removed them on another graft when the growth just started pushing out. The flush immediately ceased and I lost that graft. Now the graft may have been lost to start and the flush just a reaction of stored sugars in the scion...but still leaves me a little gun shy when I reach to remove a bloom!

  • jsvand5
    13 years ago

    Jay you know we don't believe anything without pics around here.

  • ohiojay
    13 years ago

    Too true...thanks to NJ mangosteen and his fly-by-night post. Will try to load some up this weekend...might have to see if a neighbor can help or something...

  • Andrew Scott
    Original Author
    13 years ago

    Hello Jay,
    I was wondering where you find local cherimoyas. Maybe I can get them from a local vendor? So on average, do you find cherimoya more pleasing than a sugar apple? I have been messing around with seedlings and I am thinking that I may try and order some cherimoya from cherimoya.com this week. I really didn't want to buy them this year but I would like to see for myself if the cherimoya is really worth trying to grow. I have heard good things about them. Do you find the tree is to grow? i know you have had some problems with grafting but with that aside, have you had good sucess with growing in a pot?
    Andrew

  • red_sea_me
    13 years ago

    the best cherimoya is whatever I'm lucky enough to be eating.

    a quick run down, keep in mind all the variabilities that apply (climate, ripeness when picked, taste buds, etc.)

    Fino de Jete: intensely sweet, good texture, nice sized fruit, seeds separated normaly.

    Selma: yes just some pinkish right under the skin, not red fleshed. Nice sized fruits, less sweet, more complexity, seeds had to be worked at to be romoved.

    Dr. White: nice well balanced flavor, the fruit I had was baseball sized but I've seen much larger. Seeds separated easily from the flesh.

    El Bumpo: Good sized fruits, nice acidity (for cherimoya). Seeds fell out of the fruit as they became exposed.

    I've also tried a seedling or two that were very good.

    All of them had good texture, slight grittiness near the skin. It seemed like all of them had an average # of seeds (incl. the seedlings). I could see easily eating multiple fruits per day of any of them (I did!).

    as for my favorite, please refer to line #1

    -Ethan

  • Dan8fruit
    12 years ago

    Hollow to all,

    This helps me a lot when it comes to chermoya picking and ripening. (When picking from a tree), the first best way to tell if a cherimoya is ripe is to check if the fuss falls off. Second, it will turn a lighter yellow color. Also, try shaking the fruit, if you can hear the seeds inside a hard fruit move or rattle then it will ripen perfectly. Then, give it a week to soften like a mango. Hope this information was helpful.

  • wizzard419
    12 years ago

    Just curious, I got fruit-set that has lasted this long for the first time (they are still small but very pretty El Bumpos). Looking over the comments it sounds like I should start shaking the fruit, feeling it, and looking for stem breakaway in January, correct?

    Secondary question, I have a few fruit on different sections of the tree, the one towards the bottom looks like a perfect El Bumpo but the one at the top looks like some weird hybrid of an el bumpo and something more rounded. Is that just because I might not have done as thurough a pollination?

    Funny thing, just as an experiment I froze a vial of the pollen and used it the next year and it actually took.

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