The amazing Duke Avocado

Have they ripened for you yet?

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Unfortunately I must report that they all started to fall off the tree, one by one. They continued to grow larger but for some reason just dropped off seemingly at random. The last one hung on for quite some time, but fell off by the time it was around the size of a small fist. Hoping this is was just a natural trail run for the tree and it just gets more abundant and fruitful in subsequent years.

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I don’t have personal experience with fruiting avocados, but have read fruit drop is common for young trees. Your tree looks very healthy and seems to be on a fast track for production.

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Strange, I hope this improves with age. The old Oroville trees seem to have stopped producing as well.

How long has this been going on? Does it set fruit at all, or even bloom?
As I don’t live there I don’t know whether it was effected by any of the fires in 2018, 2020, or 2024.

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I don’t know about 2023 bloom or fruiting before then, but they bloomed profusely last March.


The first time I visited the tree was on Christmas Eve, 2023. No fruit on it then, but I was probably late and I hear that people do pick the trees. Last I visited was on Nov 18, 2024. Not a single fruit on either tree. I suppose people may pick them hard, but I couldn’t see any even in their uppermost treetops or leftovers on the ground. Possibly just bad luck, or perhaps the trees are simply too old now with their dying limbs, I don’t know.

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Also this may be a dumb question but would taking scions from a tree no longer producing be able to become productive again? Or is the fruiting process over for than genetic material?

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I’m still fairly unexperienced with grafting in general, so I wouldn’t know. I do know that other people have successfully gotten Duke to fruit for them. @Marta should be able to chime in on this.

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I never thought of that but my gut says that the production is probably due to the rootstock, age, and/or the locality (perhaps the soil has changed in a detrimental way) and cuttings would probably be just fine.

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Duke trees are fast growing, vigorous, precious and productive. I made 2 in 2016 on the tiny seedlings and by 2020 these were huge and productive. One of those trees I’m actually trying to re-establish in my new orchard. It already went through 2 planting sites and two drastic size reductions (roots and canopy). It’s still alive and seems to be growing ok on its third planting site. It’s now back to about 2 ft from the ground level with about 3 inch trunk diameter at the base. If it survives this winter, I expect to have fruits in a couple of years.

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Depends on the plant. For many plants it probably doesn’t matter, but almonds for example are susceptible to a genetic condition called non-infectious bud failure, and taking propagation material from older trees with the condition results in young trees that never fruit well and have tons of blind buds. Low yield can also be due to viral infections, and new plants from infected parents may have poor yield. This used to be common with grapes and fan leaf virus.

I’m guessing that if the trees aren’t well irrigated, many of the developing fruit might have fried in the early summer heatwave we had.

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