Love to see that! With an El Niño winter ahead of us, there’s a good chance we can get through next winter without any bad freezes like the last two winters had, and maybe it can survive above the mulch and get even bigger next year!
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Yes, exactly what I’m hoping for as well.
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Finally potted up the last stragglers in this year’s germination class, these have been in the trays since November and finally sprouted in the last couple weeks:
Still need to add each of them to the database so I can tally up the new trees this year, but it’ll be at least 80 in total, to be distributed mostly next year. Maybe a few will be held back for distribution the next year as larger trees.
In other news, I noticed that one of the “Hamada” seedlings from @george had a vigorous water sprout coming up from deep in the roots, so I removed that carefully and will be trying to root it:
It looks kind of like it already has rootlets forming near the base, so it should be easy enough. I’ve had pretty good luck rooting those kind of avocado sprouts.
I’m falling way behind in updating the database lately, hopefully I’ll get a chance to catch up at some point! Some very nice looking winter survivors starting to grow well already, and plenty of new seedlings that haven’t been photographed in months.
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My 11 yr old son is enjoying your thread. He has been obsessed with it ever since he found that avocado sprout in our composter the morning after Halloween. Whenever he notices me on the forum he asked if there’s any updates to the cold hardy avocado experiment.
I got him hooked on gardening. My middle son acts like I am torturing him if I say the word soil. My lil daughter just says call me when the fruits done. Actually, she showed some interest and helped my graft the pluerries and cherry plum to the cherry pit starts. There is hope for her yet.
We are going to throw it in a 3 gallon grow bag tonight. Do you think I should go 5-10 gallon? I have lots of those too.
It’s sipping in the side channel I dug parallel to our creek this morning. The channel is my bottom water station for when the pots dry out and get hydrophobic.
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I usually do recommend stepping up to 5-7 gal as the second size after the starter pot. Deeper is better than wide, if you have options, but either will be ok. Here’s the style of 5 & 7 gal pot that I like best for the second/third year from seed:
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I’ve rooted two monstrous avocado seeds from some giant, unnamed tropical fruit my sister sent. I’m trying to get them to branch so I can try a graft with one. do you think I should get another small mexicola tree, or other variety? the fruit was near as big as my head, I know it may be a decade before I see one, but I’d like to not get that far and then break the graft.
my tree with the duke graft made it through a protected winter at 40F and I plan to pick up another small tree this year to befriend it. I look to your posts here for possible choices of variety every time I start thinking about it.
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Avocados usually will branch on their second or third flush from seed, but also you can always top them, they usually respond by getting bushy.
Perhaps it was Marcus Pumpkin? Or something similar? If so, its seedlings are likely very cold-sensitive, and may not be the greatest rootstock option, even in your greenhouse. Though I’d say test them in there for sure, but I wouldn’t graft anything to them until they’ve proven themselves for a year or two in the greenhouse.
Take a look at the grafted varieties here, and I’d be happy to share scions of anything next spring. If you would be willing to send some seeds back to the lowlands for our members to test outdoors, then I’d even be happy to do the graft for you on one of our rootstocks, though you’d have to pick it up in Seattle.
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I could do that. I’ll message you!
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#149 is the undisputed cold hardiness champion of the winter. This seedling of Duke is extremely compact, with nodes so close the leaves almost form a protective blanket:
It survived a very cold winter, with its first hard frost of 25°F (-3.9°C) right around the tree’s first birthday and then a winter low of 17°F (-8.3°C) a little over a month after that:
It was unprotected until the 6-day freeze in late December, when it was given an unheated upside-down flower pot as protection. You can see its full progression from seed germination to today here:
Avocado tree #149
I am very behind on updating the “winter survivors” list on the website, but that’s the best of the seedlings. The best of the grafted varieties is Poncho / Pancho, which took basically no leaf or bud damage with only a similar upside-down flower pot (though I wrapped the outside with LED string lights on the worst night only):
Here are its photos since grafting:
Avocado cultivar “Poncho”
There are a lot more to update, but that’s all for today.
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Finally did that! And new photos for most of the trees in that list, too.
There are still a few trees that are listed as survivors even though they haven’t shown any life yet this year, if they are on the list because they survived the previous winter outside. I hesitate to mark them “deceased” until later in summer, since it’s still possible the roots are alive.
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Just did some summer pruning on a branch of “Walter Hole” that was pointing the wrong way, got four nice scions and four cuttings to root. So far this one hasn’t been tested outside, since it’s only grafted on a greenhouse tree, so hopefully some of these cuttings will be the first to be winter tested.
Also cut a couple small Duke branches.
Many of the new seedlings started this season are ready to be grafted, and I’ve only done a handful so far, so this will more than double the total new grafts.
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It’s remarkable that this sickly little seedling keeps coming back, after I was so sure it was doomed that I called it euthanasia when I planted it out originally in the middle of January 2021. Yet here it is again, slow to sprout and small, but seems healthy enough otherwise:
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The graft of “Brissago” from the tree found growing in Switzerland is starting a second flush after the first one stalled this spring:
h/t @TucsonKen
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Great job! Looking forward to the results over time.
Where I live in south Louisiana, an average winter sees a few hard freezes in the mid 20’s. Unfortunately every handful of years we may hit the upper teens to low 20’s.
I’ve thought as well about trying a cold hardy variety, but I know I’d have to place it where I could build an enclosure and add a heater to it.
The only actual avocado I’ve seen in person was in Indonesia and it was easily 50 feet tall!
I’d want a small variety or keep it pruned really small…for ease of harvest and for ease of building freeze protection…and let’s be honest. How many avocados can you eat?!
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I know some people successfully growing the hardy types of avocado (Mexicola, Poncho, Joey, etc), unprotected, in southern Louisiana (near Baton Rouge) without any meaningful dieback most years. But I don’t know how close you are to the Gulf, I’m sure it makes a big difference being even a bit closer or further.
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That’s close enough… They may get a few degrees colder. Thank for the info.
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All avocados are self-fertile, and once the trees become large enough they are also all self-fruitful. When the trees are small, they require hand pollination because they have a special flowering pattern that means they open as male (pollen shedding) and female (pollen receptive) at different times of day. In a large tree, there will be enough flowers out of sync and enough loose pollen blowing around that it no longer matters.
The community garden group I’d talked to said Mexicola and Poncho did well for them, and both had started fruiting, but last time we were in touch a couple years ago they were adding some other varieties. That was via Twitter, but I’m no longer on that platform so I’d have to find another way to track them down.
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Thanks.
I know about the timing of the blooms but didn’t know that over time that issue goes away. I assumed you needed two varieties with the opposite opening pattern to get good fruit.
Good to know.
Also I am fascinated with the evolutionary history of avocados. We’re pretty sure it was the giant ground sloths that avocados evolved as they did. Sloths were one of the only animals capable of eating and dispersing the giant seeds… which were much bigger in relation to the meat before humans started breeding them.
If humans in south America hadn’t stumbled upon the fruit, they may have gone extinct after the sloths did. Cool stuff.
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I’ve been potting up lots of first-year seedlings recently, here’s #255, the seedling of “Aravaipa” that was the most eager first-year seedling in the entire project, with a bud break weeks ahead of any other seedling this spring:
This is also the point when I’m mostly grafting the seedlings, but this one’s vegetative precociousness earned it a graft-free life (for now).
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