First in-ground outdoor flowers ever in the project, on Poncho and looking pretty sad about the cool weather we’ve had recently:
The tree was protected for 6 days in January, otherwise was not protected at all over the winter.
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Yeah poncho feels at least as cold hardy as my Lila however anything online will say it’s less.
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Both of the Rincon Valley trees you sent bloomed outside this spring too. I had them in the greenhouse during the January freeze but put them back outside after. We had light frost a couple times at the end of March. The first one bloomed the end of April and the other bloomed in early May. Not many flowers, just a few clusters.
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My only “Rincón Valley” tree was outside in the ground. I mounded the mulch above the graft for the January freeze, but it doesn’t appear to have made it (no new growth above the graft despite scratching green). The other graft of “Puebla” on the same rootstock is regrowing, so it wasn’t the roots dying. That’s probably the end of “Rincón Valley” in our project here.
Fortunately they’ve held their own here in the Willamette Valley. Obviously not for that January cold snap. They had to be protected for that. I didn’t want to lose all the gains they had made. Both the rincon valley specimens, that royal weight seedling, Lila and Mexicola all have survived outside with minimal damage. I protect them with the same protocol as the meyer lemon and they do just as well, requiring protection around 15 nights a year. I’ve been hesitant to allow exposure below 25. But now that they are getting up towards 5 and 6 feet I may roll the dice this winter.
After a really anomalously high initial fruit set, Linh has been going through its first major abscission over the last few days. So far it has dropped exactly half the fruitlets from when I made that table 2 weeks ago. Most of the ones dropped were still pretty small like this:
While the 14 that remain on Linh have started swelling more like these:
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Here comes my first own grown avocado fruit on my two year old topa topa tree. 
It is the only fruit left from about 30 fruitlets that were set.
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Hey, just to confirm, avocado rootstock cold hardiness doesn’t directly affect the hardiness of whatever is grafted onto it, right?
The only setback is if your less hardy rootstock is exposed to the freezing temps as well, killing the rootstock out from under the otherwise hardy variety…right?
So I can just sprout a bunch of store-bought hass seeds in pots, and as long as I make sure I bury the graft point when I finally plant in-ground, only the grafted variety’s cold hardiness should matter, right?
That’s generally true, but I’ve found that some of the less hardy rootstocks cannot stand our long period of cold (mostly non-freezing) soil temperatures. Hass seedlings, Zutano seedlings, and Lula seedlings (most common rootstock in FL and Texas) have all had some significant percentage that failed to wake up at all in spring, while I’ve had nearly 100% survival rate of the roots of some things like Duke seedlings.
But this is Seattle, and there are very few other places where soil temperatures hover in the upper 30s to low 40s for a few straight months, so this may not be a problem for most people zone pushing avocados in other climates. We do also usually have at least one freeze per winter where a few inches of soil freeze, so that likely has done a few trees in, too.
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Ideally I’d love to get some Duke or fantastic seeds to graft fantastic on fantastic. If I ever get another avo that’s what it will be, but I’d like to do it myself, sourcing the seed seems the hardest tho. I’ll check Etsy for some fantastic fruit at the time of year it’s ripening
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I’ve not yet found any reliable source for Fantastic seeds. The ones I bought on Etsy were weak seedlings with no anise scent that quickly died the next winter, so probably were just Hass seeds.
Craig Hepworth did offer Del Rio seeds last year, his first time ever offering to ship anything (he usually requires you to pick up trees at his nursery), and it might be worth checking in with him to see if he plans to do that again. They are very hardy, might be the hardiest seedlings I’ve tested so far. They start ripening for him in summer, so he should have a clear idea of what his fruit set looks like by this time of year. The best way to get in touch with him is probably Instagram, but I’m not on that and he’s been pretty responsive to messages sent via his email form here:
It’s worth noting that Del Rio is a rare Mexican avocado cultivar that has almost no scent to the leaves, but some of the seedlings from Craig have a strong scent, so presumably they’ve been pollenized by other cultivars he has growing next to the main Del Rio tree.
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Thanks, I just filled out a form for him. What time of year would he have seeds you think, it ripens in summer?
I think it starts in late June for him and usually is done in September some time. He sent my seeds in September last year, right around the end of the season for Del Rio at his location.
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Ok cool, doesn’t matter much just curious on ripening times. I would only want 4 seeds max, would be happy with 1 or 2
Whenever my pancho and lila start fruiting you better believe I’ll be using those seeds. You made a lot of sense with the rootstocks being bacon or the like which isn’t as cold hardy as the tops are. Such a no-brainer to make your rootstock at least as cold hardy
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I just had a talk at Prickett’s Nursery. They sell avocado trees, but I was only seeing the common ones like Stuart and Mexicola. I asked about avos like Duke or Poncho; they said they don’t have them, but they’ll ask their supplier next time they order trees…We’ll see.
Also one employee there is very into horticulture so I talked him about avocados too. He gave me his contact info and told me about his friend up in Cloverdale whose family owns a giant avocado tree that did fine in the cold winter they got a few years ago. He says the tree produces long-necked sorta watery avocados. Has anyone heard of this tree before or have an idea on the variety?
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I’ve heard of that tree, if it’s the one along the roadside, but don’t know anything more than it’s existence, and hadn’t heard that fruit description. That sounds similar to Royal-Wright, though, which is long-necked and mild in flavor. Maybe watery if eaten early or after heavy rains, but I found the flesh of Royal-Wright to be similar to Bacon in many ways.
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I’m not positive that these are showing a genetic issue (it’s possible, for example, that there was uneven herbicide contamination in the municipal compost used as a potting mix ingredient), but that’s my best guess. I see some percentage of all avocado seedlings that show some similar type of weakness, though sometimes they grow out of it.
In any case here are two examples, with a tub of their more normal looking siblings behind for comparison:
I potted up another seedling today, but the roots hadn’t quite filled the pot yet, so I think I’ll wait at least a few more weeks before starting that task in earnest.
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Happy to see Joe’s Black Duke #1 appears to have taken. This was also my first time ever attempting a Z graft (for mismatched scion size), I’ll be curious to see what the graft union looks like when the rubber band and buddy tape come off.
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Hey you got the black Duke - that’s exciting. I think I got one take as well.
It is annoying it’s so hard to get cold hardy seeds. I have a Mexicola and Aravaipa in the yard and just planted my Duke. Cold hardy varieties grow very fast in the mild weather here. I’d be happy to sell some seeds. I have a hobby nursery in my back yard but selling seeds seems so much easier than selling grafted plants.
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Joe’s Black Duke? What is this? At least it sounds cool.