That’s awesome!
I’d love to see some winners out of this experiment.
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I lived in the Bay Area for 25 years and in my opinion even the summer is fairly mild. Locations about 20-30 miles east of the bay or ocean get toasty in the summer and early fall, but very rarely above 90. I lived in one of the warmest pockets of the Bay Area, inland Sonoma County, and a typical summer day was about 82. Parts of my childhood was spent in the deserts of southeast California, and those are regions I consider hot. The average summer day had an average high over 105. As for the dry Bay Area winters recently, that is abnormal. The 30 year historic average suggests most Bay Area locations receive between 18-33” of rain with 90% falling on 1/3 of the days between November and March. Besides the winter of 2016/17, which had historic rainfall, the last decade has been far below average. If you study Bay Area weather data from the last century, you’ll find that 7-10 year periods of below average rainfall aren’t uncommon. These are typically followed by 7-10 year periods with average or above average rainfall. Historically you would never describe the Bay Area as dry during an average winter. Fairly wet is a more accurate description. Certain avocado types have no problem surviving in the Bay Area. If you are growing them in the interior valleys you’ll need to protect them for the first couple of winters. After that they will do great. The Mexicola cultivars flourish in all Bay Area counties.
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I’m in the Bay Area (Livermore). The average is only 14" rain per year. I’d call that very dry. Especially compared to the Pac NW. And the summers are brutally hot, averaging almost 90° for 3 straight months, with mild winters. So yeah, I’ll say it again, growing Avocados in Seattle will be a tricky if not an impossible feat. I’ve killed my share of Haas, Fuerte, and Little Cado’s in my NorCal climate.
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I would definitely never try to grow those varieties here! So far I’ve seen no issues with the summer growing season. Some of my seedlings grew 3+ feet in their first year from seed. But that record cold snap in December (6 days below freezing with lows of 18° and 16° on the first and last nights) killed most of those back to the ground. I’ll see later this spring how many of them regrow, and hopefully next winter is more typical by recent years with the coldest temperatures in the low 20s.
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Livermore is one of the drier regions of the Bay Area. Its getting more towards an inland climate, but still not as hot as Stockton and other Central Valley areas. It’s also amazing avocado growing area. If you keep them covered on the coldest nights for the initial few years it will grow into a phenomenal tree. I’ve seen massive avocado trees all over that area from Concord to Sac to Walnut Creek. I would never argue Seattle is good avocado growing climate. As far as I know the northernmost commercial avocados are in Shelter Cove on the Humboldt/Mendocino line. I know of some successful backyard operations in Hiouchi right on the California/Oregon border, and as far north as Curry county Oregon. All I can say about the Bay Area climate, as someone who grew up in the desert of SoCal, is that it isn’t brutally hot and it isn’t extremely dry. It isn’t classified as semi arid. It gets over 60 days of rain on an average year. That’s only about 1/3 less than areas of the Willamette Valley. Does the Bay Area get as much rain as the Pacific Northwest? No. But it is fairly similar regardless. The central and southernmost parts of the Pacific Northwest are quite similar to most of northwest California.
This shows how similar the climate along the entire Pacific coast:
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Yeah, I was more replying to the other comment about Bay Area climates. I’m an Avocado freak so I’d LOVE to see your experiment work. I’d probably even trade you for a cutting if you had success!
Good luck.
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The variety that you’ll have the most luck with is the Mexicola. Are you familiar with Luther Burbank? He was a very progressive and prolific plant scientist from the late19th and early 20th century. He was based in Santa Rosa during the latter part of his life and developed 100’s of plants that are widely grown today. You can actually still visit his farms in downtown Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. It’s well worth a visit if you are up in Sonoma County. One of his more famous avocado cultivars is a type of Mexicola that does phenomenally well growing at inland locations around the Bay Area. Here is a pick of a really prolific producer that grows by my old house in Santa Rosa.
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Wow! That’s insane. Is this the same Mexicola that’s pretty widely available in most reputable nurseries?
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Hard to tell. There are a few possibilities possibilities. I don’t know if this one in Santa Rosa is a seedling or a grafted specimen. I once talked to the guy who tended it and he said it was the same as the Mexicola that Burbank developed, but he never specified if it was a seedling or not. I can’t see a graft scar but sometimes those can end up below the soil line. There’s a guy who has a great YouTube channel about growing Mexicola in zone 8 in South Carolina. It’s not too difficult to do your own. You can order a cold hardy rootstock and then find a local tree for cuttings. Then you’ll be sure to have a tree that you know has done really well in your climate. If you want to visit this tree it’s on the corner of Mission and Montgomery in Santa Rosa. It’s directly across from the 7-11 at 50 Mission a few steps east of the entrance to Mountain Mike’s pizza. There are actually many huge avocado trees around downtown Santa Rosa. I also know of some well known trees in Sacramento. The addresses can be found online.
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I think once again there’s some confusion where people refer to Mexican types as “Mexicola” in a general sense. The “Mexicola” cultivar was developed by D.W. Coolidge in Pasadena around 1910. I haven’t been able to find any named cultivars that say they were developed by Burbank himself, though plenty of references to him growing and selecting avocado seedlings. So that tree might be a grafted “Mexicola” or it might be a seedling or grafted specimen of Mexican avocado from Burbank’s collection, but it cannot be both Mexicola and a Burbank selection, since I don’t think Burbank was involved with the Coolidge Rare Plant Garden in Pasadena where Mexicola originated.
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Seattle wouldn’t be a test of cold hardiness, more like cool wet and grey hardiness. I would expect avocadoes to need a strong sun to reach good quality as well as temps that very rarely dropped below freezing. I tried growing them when I was young at the base of a canyon in the Malibu area, a few miles from the ocean, but frost was common there. I never succeeded, but I don’t remember if it was frost or just too much shade from the uke trees. I didn’t try that hard as adequately tree ripened ones were always available from stores and even roadside stands back then. There were several varieties to choose from in well-stocked health food stores, ones that ripened in summer and winter. All of them CA grown- guacamole was not yet a national dish. I don’t think chips and gwok became standard until the late '90’s, outside of Mexican restaurants.
My brother grows several types where he lives in Kauai and has them most of the year.
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Ripening quality will have to be something that I worry about only if I can overcome the challenge of keeping them alive until they are large enough to fruit! We do get 3-4 months of uninterrupted sunny, dry weather during the summer, with lows in the upper 50s and highs in the mid-upper 70s. But most Mexican-race avocados don’t finish ripening until fall or even the next spring.
For most commercial cultivars (Guatemalan type or hybrids), they tend to be fairly frost tender. Hass can take occasional mild frosts but nothing worse. The hardiest (pure Mexican) cultivars can allegedly survive occasional mid-teens (°F), and more frequent mid-20s, with only minimal damage. Those types have mostly been tested in central Texas and northern California, in areas with similar minimum temperatures to Seattle, but with other differences in winter sunlight and rain and summer temperatures.
So yeah, it’s a long shot, but one I’m ready to dedicate a few years to at least!
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Thanks. I get out there for work, time to time. Will check it out.
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I’m definitely familiar that Mexicola is not synonymous with Mexican race. It is a type of avocado from the Mexican race along with hundreds of other cultivars. As you say, the confusion about Mexicola and Mexican type is semantic. As for the Burbank Mexicola, there’s a display next to an avocado tree at the Burbank farm, explaining how Burbank did significant work on the Mexicola. What does that mean exactly? That’s a good question. Is it possible he developed his own hybrid of the Mexicola? That has always been my understanding. It’s also the understanding shared by many people in Sonoma County. The next time I head down there I’ll go check it out. I’m fairly certain he did create his own hybrid
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There are lots of avocado cultivars you can grow in Los Angeles county, even in the frost prone inland valleys. You’d have to protect them during their initial winters, but you can get nearly any of the Mexican type avocados to grow very well in LA area. The only areas where it isn’t possible is at high elevation. I don’t know what the cut off is, but I’d imagine it gets really difficult above 2500’. My friend has a place in San Bernardino county at about 4500’ and the avocado trees he attempted stood no chance. He can’t even grow citrus trees at his place. The trade off is he gets to have excellent air quality and doesn’t have to suffer through the wicked Southern California heat waves every summer. Avocados north of the Oregon/California border seem like a long shot, but that doesn’t mean impossible. Sure would be awesome if someone developed an avocado tree that could stand up to the cold like the hardy citrus varieties can. Though even the hardy citrus require some accommodation in the Pacific Northwest.
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My guess is whoever made that sign was also making the same semantic mistake, and they just meant that he developed a small black-fruited Mexican avocado that superficially resembles the “Mexicola” cultivar.
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I found some information on the experimental farm website.
The self guided tour claims specimen #12 (an avocado tree) was ‘grown from the seed of an original Burbank selection, a huge old tree in Santa Rosa. Well adapted to the local climate, it bore small small but tasty fruit.’
Unpacking this statement leaves more questions than answers.
Do the authors mean that the parent tree was selected by Burbank (meaning hybridized)?
Also the reference to small, tasty fruit is odd. I’ve never considered the Mexicola fruit particularly small. There are smaller avocados growing locally in Santa Rosa, but I always assumed they were something else. Perhaps those are the Mexicola hybrids Burbank was working on. I can’t find enough information online to satisfactorily answer these questions.
I’m also perplexed by the tree growing by the 7-11. The fruit on that tree are quite large. They look about the same size as other Mexicola I have seen. This clashes significantly with what is written at the experimental farm about ‘small, tasty fruit.’ What makes it even more confusing is the guy tending that tree claimed it was the same as the other ‘Burbank avocados around here.’
I suppose the best way to answer these questions is to seek somebody out who works at the farm or museum. I’ll be down there again in June and I’ll try to do that.
If you are still interested I can gather some more cutting and maybe get a few seeds.
Screenshot from the experimental farm:
Fruit on the tree at 50 mission:
Do you think these look like a typical Mexicola?
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The other avocado tree I often see growing around Sonoma County produces very small fruit that is black and nearly perfectly round.
Does that description ring any bells for you?
I think that sounds like the fruit described on experimental farm guide.
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One of those looks like a “cuke” (seedless avocado) and the other is too immature to say. Here’s what the Mexicola cultivar looks like:
There are many Mexican avocado cultivars that look similar, though, including many seedling trees.
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One source writes that many producers have found a market for cuke avocados (also known as cocktail avocados). To me that statement implies a certain quantity can be depended upon to serve a market demand. Is it possible to force or at least encourage the formation of cuke avocados?
What about the small, round black avocados I’ve seen. Any idea about what those might be?
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