This seedling that came up in my compost over the summer survived about 27 degrees the other night, but it’s clearly not happy about it. Not sure if that’s a noteworthy amount of hardiness.
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This year, most of them (120 or so) were donated by someone in Gainesville who wants to see the project succeed. Same person donated about 80 last year.
About 35 were purchased from Craig Hepworth, who started selling Del Rio seeds this year because his largest tree had a bumper crop and he had more than he needed for rootstocks in his nursery.
That’s pretty good for what’s presumably a Hass seedling, but it’s probably not a sign of extreme hardiness. I mostly don’t grow out Hass seeds anymore because none of them ever sprouted from their roots in spring, even the few that seemed to handle mild freezes pretty well, but if that one does sprout from the roots next spring it might be a good rootstock at least! Edit: I forgot where you live when I said that. There’s very little (zero?) chance it survives in your climate, even just the roots, since I assume your ground will freeze solid? As far as I know even the hardiest avocados die when the ground freezes, so that’s one of the hard limits on zone pushing them without soil heaters and a structure over them.
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Yes, I fully expect it to die over the winter, much like the date palm that came up in my garden a few years back. I was just surprised it wasn’t already completely toasted. Ground definitely freezes here. Frost line is about three feet, but well mulched spots often don’t completely freeze. If by some miracle it does come back from the roots, I’ll be sure to let you know!
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Hey there and greets from Germany,
i am finally done with the whole forum. That was a quest to be done!
Congratulations on the project going so well and others joining. I will follow up your news and maybe we can exchange seeds at some point.
I am planning to visit a spot in northern Italy this month, where a huge tree is fruiting since years and it´s freezing/snowing regularly. This tree was bearing fruits in august and i hope to snatch some.
Good luck with a mild winter. We want to see that huge avo without die back next year 
Thomas
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Welcome to Growing Fruit @LabAlpaca! I would love to see photos of that tree and its fruit if you can post them here when you visit it. I always like to see examples of avocados succeeding in tough climates.
Unfortunately the United States has a pretty strict prohibition on importing avocado seeds or cuttings, and I wouldn’t want to risk having the project trees confiscated by USDA inspectors if I had an international package intercepted, so I’m not interested in trying to import any seeds for the time being. If the rules ever loosen or someone finds a loophole to legally bring them in, then I’d be very open to that idea!
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Yep, the work never seems to end when you go all in with the plants.
Your avocados must be super happy with these subtropical weather systems lately.
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I potted up about half of the Daughter seeds in their starter pots. They mostly had little roots already like this one, which was added to the database today as #346:
And these are the starter pots they went into, Steuwe D60H (14") deepots :
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Looking really nice!
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Thanks and i am super happy to be here
It´s forbidden to send seeds too? Wow ok. We have the root rot already around in Italy i think.
Still these rules are absolutely important to keep pathogens away!
I will post some pics of the tree and leaves, if i manage it to go there. Now i am looking for your Del Rio aka Fantastic seedlings, which perform best here in Ger up to know for a another avo-fan.
Greets Thomas
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While some people have claimed that those two cultivars are the same, they are not. I have received Del Rio scions from Craig Hepworth (who gave that cultivar that name) and Fantastic scions from Fruitwood Nursery (who I trust to have accurate labels) and they are definitely not the same. The leaves look (and smell) different. Del Rio is unusual among Mexican avocados in having only a very faint anise scent in the leaves, but Fantastic has a strong scent.
If you can afford the fees, I recommend that you order scionwood from Fruitwood. They are able to ship to the EU with the paperwork required for you to legally import them, and they have a variety of different hardy cultivars in their inventory, including both Fantastic and Poncho (which has proven to be very hardy here), as well as Mexicola Grande and others:
Their inventory should update within a few weeks, and here is their international shipping policy:
International Shipping
$15.00 base fee, plus 30% of the order subtotal. On top of this all international orders need to have a phytosanitary inspection and certificate, which costs $70.00. This will be automatically charged at checkout and is the same for any size order.For all international orders please contact us in advance via email (corrinaandmarc@fruitwoodnursery.com) so we can make sure the plant materials you want are allowed into the country you are in. Also some countries also require an import permit which potentially could be hard to get.
Note: Our International shipping fee may not charge enough for Priority shipping to all areas. We will send you a supplimental invoice for such orders if you desire this upgraded shipping, which is recommended. The charge will always be enough for First Class shipping, but for going long distances Priority is highly recommended.
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Which vendor do you order your Mexicola grande seeds from?
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Haven’t been able to find anyone offering those since 2021 when I got a box of them from Brad Spaugh on TFF. He topworked that tree to Sharwil the next year.
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Have you got any Wurtz going up there? I’d like to try that in the dome. I was looking online and the cheapest I found a 3 gallon specimen for is $70. Most are going for $100 or more. One place is asking $200! Seems like a lot of businesses are using inflation as an excuse to price gouge. I’d like to see the numbers that justify 150-200% increases for plants over the last couple or years.
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I don’t think any avocado that ripens in 12+ months in southern CA is worth trying here. I don’t have good information on the ripening times for some of the varieties I’ve added in the greenhouse, but I know in northern CA things like Mexicola, Aravaipa, and Duke ripen within this same red window on the chart below. I don’t even want pollen floating around from anything with a longer ripening season. I assume everything will already be at least a month later here due to delayed spring flowering, so even the earliest varieties are pushing what’s feasible in this climate. Inside my greenhouse, the varieties mentioned above mostly flowered at the same time as they did for Marta when I checked with her the last couple years, but things outside mostly budded out 1-2 months later.
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Hey there,
nice little kindergarten upcoming
Can u give us the soil mix you are using? That would be great!
Thx for the tips on Del Rio and Fantastic. To be honest, i think a lot of fraud and semi-correctness is going around with cultivars of rare varieties. That´s why we have to try and check on.
All the best, Thomas
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I’ve tried a few different mixes over the last few years, and honestly nothing has worked great compared to planting them in the ground. Some percentage of potted seedlings show root stress every winter no matter what they are planted in. I think our cool temperatures, even in the greenhouse, make them prone to root issues. In the ground, they always look very happy other than freeze damage.
What I’ve mostly done is order a truckload of “garden mix” from a local bulk soil company, and I mix that with coarse perlite to improve drainage. However, I haven’t found a local source of bulk perlite that’s at all affordable, so this year I decided to try adding more sand to the mix instead. It results in a mix that is probably too dense, but it’s a LOT cheaper, so if it ends up working ok then I’ll just do that going forward.
I posted about the garden mix here:
The only modification is I’m adding about 20% more sand for the new seeds this winter, instead of adding perlite.
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Here are nearly all the trees I’ll be distributing to project members in spring:
There are a handful of others that are in 10 to 20 gal pots, and my back told me it wasn’t worth carrying them across the patio for a photo. Here are about half of the trees missing from the other other photo (the largest one in the black pot is going in the ground in my yard in spring, though):
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They all look fantastic. Such a generous contribution to the community. Many thanks for facilitating a fantastic resource for everyone.
Hasn’t this early El Niño weather been phenomenal? So many plants are loving it. Feels very much like Northern California winter conditions. Still cold enough to accentuate the seasonal transition, but not yet cold enough to stress most of the zone pushing, subtropical specimens. Avocados and citrus stand to benefit greatly, if the El Niño predictions hold, especially trees still getting established.
I read some encouraging data about the impact a strong El Niño has in the PNW. According to weather.gov El Niño in the early 1930’s persisted from autumn 1933 until spring 1935, and was merely one aspect of an unprecedented warming pattern that continued for 5 years. At one point, during the peak of the phenomenon, Portland went 687 days without a freeze, from 14 February 1933 until 3 January 1935. The entirety of 1934 elapsed without a single day at or below freezing.
My purple possum passionfruit is loving it this fall. Surprisingly, hot pepper plants are still loaded with bright red fruit. And a few of the citrus are confused enough to be blooming. I just hope we don’t get walloped by a wicked cold snap on the heels of protracted mild weather. I’ve read that’s one of the most common difficulties gardeners encounter when growing avocados and citrus in most of the Southeast. Hopefully the predictions I’ve read for the El Niño this winter hold true. If so, the next significant Arctic blast might not be until winter 2025. Unlikely, of course, but perhaps the freezes we do have will be tamer than what we’ve come to expect.
So, according to the harvest calendar you posted, the Wurtz’s ripening times aren’t at all suited for the PNW. Besides the Duke and Mexicola, what’s the other one you favor for this region?
Recently, I’d been thinking about getting a Duke to plant alongside a Mexicola and the Rincon Valley, but when I tried to find an online source, the only one was a Etsy vendor, advertising Duke seedlings for $75. Besides being crazy expensive, I’d really have to take the vendor at their word. No easy feat in a world metastasizing with con artists. Could be years before I find out it wasn’t a Duke after all. Do you know of any trusted commercial or personal sources that sell either Duke seeds or scions?
By the way, what’s your best guess for identifying the Rincon Valley tree? You may have already told me your suspicion, and if so I apologize, as I’ve forgotten.
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