Oh, so you’ve been away? That’s the worst for me. Whenever I’m down in California, I’m constantly checking the weather app to make sure the plants aren’t in any danger.
I’ve never had a Mexicola grande that I’m aware of. Do you find them pleasing to eat?
I’ve only had them once, but I found them to be OK. A little larger than Mexicola, less shiny-smooth skin (though just as thin), not quite as good tasting.
How about last night? This was our first below 30°F, made it down to just over 28° before fog/clouds moved in this morning and insulated the surface so the temperature could climb back up a bit:
I’ll be doing a survey of all the outside trees sometime later today or tomorrow, and I’ll post a few highlights here. Looks like the dry/cold weather will be leaving again soon:
We woke up to 22f this morning. My mexicola is in a plastic dome with the citrus. The dome gets the same temp as the outside but protects from frost. We added two kerosene lanterns and kept the temp a little above 29f in the dome all night. We add 3 to 4f degrees for each lantern we add to the dome, I have 4 lanterns total to utilize, bought the lanterns from Germany and bought the “brass hats” for them too, to reflect heat down and reduce light for the plants at night.
The mexicola previously handled 24/25f with no lanterns, so I think we should be okay. I didn’t look before leaving for work because I didn’t want to let heat out of the dome before it warmed up a little outside.
I watch videos from a guy in South Carolina who grows lots of citrus and Mexicola avocado. He posted a video of walking around in his garden on an early winter morning while the temp was in the teens. He said several hours had elapsed below freezing. All of his trees were doing fantastic, including the avocado.
Bring on the subtropical temps!
Hi, did you have the link for is vidos thx
This is the dude. He’s got so many videos posted you’ll have to navigate around and find them. He did a series of several videos showcasing his trees during harsh work yet conditions.
I’ve gotten some good info from this guy too. He grows phenomenal meyer lemon, satsuma and Lila avocado outside in the ground in North Carolina.
I’d like the video too please. I imagine they are mature trees? Mine are younger.
Thx i will go through is video for the avocado info, i know him for his satsumas. The Millennial Gardener have multitude of beautiful citrus tree and the Lila tree has giving him a fruit this year.
The links to those videos are in my previous comment, earlier in the thread. The content is from two different YouTubers:
Lead Farmer
and
Millennial Gardener
If you type either of those names into a YouTube search hundreds of their videos will populate your screen.
They both have great content about growing subtropical plants outdoors in temperate/oceanic regions: Pacific Northwest, Northwest California, western foothills of mid latitude mountain ranges, Salish Sea, etc…
Besides avocados, they also discuss cultivating pomegranates, figs, kiwis, citrus, loquat, feijoa, Chilean guava, olives, persimmons and much more.
There are also several informative videos and ‘how to grow’ documents by Bob Duncan. His nursery business, called Fruit Trees and More, located on southern Vancouver Island, has all those plants I mentioned growing outdoors in Canada.
Since this thread is intended to for the avocado trial I’ll go ahead and send you Bob Duncan’s information as a direct message.
By the way, I meant to ask you about your cold protection system for your avocados. You mentioned protecting the avocado trees and teepees and domes.
Do you have any pics you could share of your set up? I’ve been looking into something similar for my new avocado plantings. It’s be nice to see an example of what you’ve managed so far.
Yeah, Millennial Gardener has some fantastic specimens. He’s also very optimistic, which I appreciate. As a person who sometimes has depressive episodes, I am grateful when someone can share contagious happiness. Plants are my #1 antidepressant!
Your profile says that you’re in growing zone 9a. That’s nice. If you don’t mind saying, what region of the country are you located in? I’d imagine you probably have a relatively easy time with avocados and citrus in a zone 9, compared to the volatility we often face with the weather in zone 8.
If you are struggling at all with the climate I can suggest info from Bob Duncan. I find it quite helpful. While he does grow avocado, and has some videos out there about those, his primary focus is citrus…
Fortunately, I’ve learned that most of the steps necessary to grow citrus outside in Oregon are also excellent for growing the avocados. I replicate the steps I took to successfully grow citrus and applied them to the avocados. They only need protection from the cold for about 30-40 nights out of the year. While it requires a bit more work than the greenhouse trees, I find there’s something extra uplifting about helping a tree make it outside. I use a polycarbonate overhang at 9 feet above the ground, frost blankets and C9 incandescent Christmas lights. Altogether these add 17-20 degrees warmth when needed. I figure this system has me covered until we hit single digits. That hasn’t happened in decades, but when it does again, if I’m still living here, I’ll have to probably add another heat source. This morning we dropped all the way down to 22 at around 4 am, yet under the frost blanket it was a perfectly safe 41.
https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Sudachi+vancouver+island
I’m not much of a video watcher (ADHD perhaps? I prefer to read rather than watch), but I do know that Bob planted out his large greenhouse avocado tree this year after struggling with fruit set in the greenhouse, so I’m looking forward to checking in with him in the early summer next year to see if he got any fruit to set outdoors. I forget what the variety was, maybe Lila or something like that?
We ended up getting home after dark today, and there was already a bit of frost forming for the night. No signs of any damage on the Mexicola Grande seedling, #37. Not a huge surprise, but zero damage at 28°F is a good milestone.
That’s awesome! And the extended forecast is for lows in the 50’s next week. Loving the El Niño. Didn’t feel like it this week around here. The rebound will be nice.
I saw a video of Bob Duncan and his avocados. I wonder if that’s the one you saw too? Do you happen to have the link?
I’m heading up to Victoria this spring and plan to make a trip over to see his place. Also going to visit Butchart Gardens again. I haven’t been there in years. It is outstanding. One of the nicest I’ve ever been to. Have you visited? Can’t recommend it enough for fellow plant nerds. I stay in Port Angeles to visit family and take the ferry from there.
All that and I forgot to add the link for the document and instead added video links about citrus. Sorry, I’m very tired. Here it is:
I now live near Mont Saint-Michel in the north of Brittany France but I am originally from the Mediterranean coast and I am trying to reproduce an orchard with fruit trees that I used to have (citrus, loquat, pomegranates, jujubes, figs). The big differences where I live now with the south of France are not the lowest temperatures but lower sunshine, and more rain. In the future i want to grow avocado orchard with cold hardy cultivars, the avocado tree it’s difficult to find but more and more small nurseries grows mexican and texan type cultivars.
I didn’t watch a video, I talked with him on the phone and via email, and then got further updates from a member of the avocado project who lives nearby and visits Bob regularly. Like I said, I’m not really a video watcher.
Sounds like a great project! Welcome to the forum, and I look forward to updates. Further up in this thread there are forum members in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK who are experimenting with hardy varieties. You all should form a European cold-hardy avocado society to swap scions and seeds!
Are you familiar with the prolific avocado tree in London? You might want to get some cuttings from those trees and try them where you are.
It’s not particularly hardy, just in a very, very warm microclimate. If you look at a zone map for London, there are pockets of zone 10, and most of the London avocados (there are a few different ones in different spots) are also planted in brick or stone courtyards deep within the urban heat island. The famous London trees are Guatemalan type, lacking a scent in the leaves and ripening over more than a year.
I would instead recommend getting actual hardy cultivars.
