Hey, we’ve finally gotten a freeze, 29°F last night and 31°F the night before.
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Wow! Meanwhile, 500+ miles to your north, it didn’t even fall below 40°F in my yard the last couple nights:
Were your avocados in the middle of flowering? I actually don’t know much about the frost tolerance of avocado flowers. It’s not really something I expect to ever need to worry about, since even the earliest outdoor trees don’t start flowering until after our record last frost date.
Sadly, I’m not up there right and can’t take a look at my mexicola. We just planted it before winter, so maybe is isn’t bothering to bloom? The tree was also fertilized about a month ago.
Although we’re supposed to be getting thoses temps, the avocado tree is also planted in a little microclimate on top of a hill so it may not be as severe. Apparently, we got a little snow as well.
It seems we’re always getting late freezes or something, like in January or February it’s like t-shirts and everyone’s planting tomatoes, just to put 5 gallon buckets over them for the next few months.
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two of the trees now have flowered, that pollen just got here so today I pollinated ever flower I could find. one of a mexicola I’ve had a while, the one with the more open flowers has your tag, Northrop I think? pollinated them both and will see what happens. I do not expect fruit, there’s only a few dozen flowers on each.
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If I sent you Northrop, that’s great news! My only tree was planted in the ground outside and the rootstock was killed even though the grafted part seemed to survive the cold. I took a cutting (after the freeze) and grafted it to another seedling in a pot, but not clear yet if that will succeed (though it has started budding out). If it fails, I may request cuttings from yours at some point! It’s a very difficult variety to find, the only place that I know has it is the U.C. research grove in SoCal, and you have to visit in person to get scionwood.
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it’s really grown well, you gave me one entire in a pot and it’s grown a lot. I will be in Seattle over summer at some point- I’ll try to bring the whole darn thing over for you to look at if possible. whether you’d like to cut scion at some point or reclaim it, anything is ok with me!
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Here’s a nice example of overlapping flower modes. On the left, a fully open pollen-shedding flower (
), on the bottom-right side is a flower opening for the first time, receptive to pollen (
). The one in the middle is almost done closing for the final time, and the rest of the buds haven’t opened yet.
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First flower to open ( phase) on “Brissago” today. It has a pinkish style, unlike any other cultivar I’ve flowered so far except Duke:
I haven’t flowered Wilma yet, though, which is currently top of my list as likely synonym or seed parent of Brissago (based mostly on leaf color and shape).
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Most of the greenhouse grafts are nearing the end of flowering now, so begins the nail-biting period where I wait to see if any of them were successfully pollinated. No sign of any fruitlets yet, but still lots of flowers holding tight after closing up.
To distract myself from that waiting, here agree some photos of new vegetative flushes on various cultivars.
Aravaipa:
Brissago:
Duke:
Jade:
Joey:
Linh:
Long South Gate:
Teague (which always has this distinctive leaf texture, which flattens out as they harden):
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I don’t see fruitlets yet but flowers are still opening, a few. I’m keeping my expectations low as this is the first time I’ve seen a flower on any of these
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Mine completely skipped a bloom cycle this year and I’m pretty pumped on that. Next year would be the first year I’d want them holding fruit. Really this is the best looking growth they’ve both had so far. This will be the third year in ground, they’ve really appreciated the increased irrigation, wish I had started them on this regiment.
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“Jade” did that the first two years after grafting, and “Teague” has skipped three years now. Most of the rest have flowered 2 or 3 times without setting any fruit yet. I’ve been chalking it up to the small number of flowers (since only 1 out of thousands of blossoms typically become fruit), but if the same thing happens again this year, I’ll have to consider that it’s some other problem, because there were probably at least 30,000 individual flowers among all the greenhouse trees this year, and more than 25% of those were hand pollinated (which was a lot of work if it proved inadequate!).
But honestly even if my rough estimate of 30,000 flowers is correct, it might be within the “normal” range of fruit set to get zero fruit, according to this excerpt from The Avocado: Botany and Production, and Uses:
The low end of that range, 0.001%, would be a mere 1 in 100,000 flowers.
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Today’s Update: Looks like the mexicola is actually going to flower, seems a bit late…
Also, back in December I cut a small branch off of the Second Red Avocado tree in Santa Rosa (https://maps.app.goo.gl/bmupdAgpcXXSL9Z16) mentioned by Marta. The branch made it 300 miles by car, then sat around on a handrail for 3 days, before I got around to rooting cuttings off the poor wilted thing. After all the struggle, all but one cutting attempt has died, even looking good still:
On a side note, @swincher do you use data logging thermometers or something for recording temps? If so, can you recommend any?
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Avocados are very difficult to root, and generally require at least a few green leaves attached to the cutting in order to succeed, and typically will only root after many months. If the leaves fall off sooner, that means probably no roots will form. The stem will sometimes stay green for many more weeks, but I’ve never had one succeed without leaves kept on it until after new buds begin to swell.
I would normally suggest grafting rather than rooting, it’s a much higher success rate. But either way, I would say prepare the cuttings soon after you collect them, rather than keeping a whole branch and letting it dry out.
Scionwood for grafting should be only hardened stems, any new growth should be removed, and it should have all leaves removed and be soaked in a glass of water for a couple hours and then refrigerated in a plastic bag.
Cuttings for rooting should have at least 3 and up to 6 leaves on them, but the leaves can be trimmed back a bit to minimize water loss and make it easier to cover them with a jar to maintain humidity. Here’s an example of what those look like, though the stem can be a bit longer:
Those can be stored in a glass of water at room temperature for a few weeks, as long as the water is changed regularly. Some will wilt, and should be discarded before they foul up the water. Once they go in soil, they should be covered for at least a few months.
Oh and my setup for temperature monitoring is likely unnecessarily complicated. I use raspberry pi single-board-computers with sensor chips wired into them. I wrote about it here:
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My Pancho has Verticillium wilt, it’s about 6-8 foot from my Lila so it likely has it also. I thought it was basically gone but noticed a branch dieback yesterday and another looking like it’s next. Think it’s best to ignore or is there anything I can/should do to help the tree more? Perhaps increase fertilization or some sort of spray or beneficial nematodes etc
I’m guessing that’s why it didn’t bloom. I have noticed any bit of drought stress is what makes some dieback occur so I increased the water to mitigate this affect
Oh no! Are you sure it’s not laurel wilt? I don’t know if that has made it up your way, but it’s a lot more common in the Southeast than Verticillium wilt in avocados.
I am just guessing, when you cut the affected part there is brown inside. When I get home from work I’ll snap a photo or two if I cut the branch. It seems to respond better to not cutting branches in the past. Lost a lot of growth removing branches, with a bit of dieback after pruning.
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Just read up on laurel wilt this can’t be it, it’s had whatever this is for about 2 years
The symptoms can be very similar, but laurel wilt is spread by the ambrosia beetle rather than getting picked up by the roots. In both cases the tree can appear to recover, but with laurel wilt it will almost always come back. Here’s a UF-IFAS publication with some information:
I know some people who have completely given up on growing avocados in Florida because of LW.
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