Grown for their lush foliage and nutritious and delicious fruit, avocado trees are popular landscape plants in tropical and subtropical climates.
How to Plant an Avocado Tree
Avocado trees prefer a well-drained, slightly acid soil (pH 6-6.5); they do poorly in wet soils. They grow best when planted in full sun with protection from wind and frost. To conserve soil moisture, mulch with two to six inches of coarse bark mulch. Keep the mulch at least eight inches from the base of the trunk to protect the trunk from insects and diseases.
Spring is the best time to plant avocados. Because they can easily grow to 40 feet tall and have a spreading root system, plant avocado trees at least 25 feet from any building. To protect trunks from damage from lawn mowers, roots from overwatering by lawn irrigation systems, and fruit from the negative effects of lawn fertilizer, choose non-lawn sites for your avocado trees.
Fertilizing and Watering Avocado Trees
Fertilizer recommendations vary by location, but are consistently light during the first year. Infrequent thorough watering promotes strong root growth, particularly important for the shallow rooted avocado. For the first three years water young trees weekly during extended droughts.
Avocado Tree Pests and Diseases
While a number of insects attack avocado trees, they rarely affect the fruit enough to warrant any type of control measures. A good way to avoid disease problems is to plant scab-resistant varieties in well-drained soils and monitor the leaves and fruit for signs of disease. Avocadoes are susceptible to a number of fungal problems. Local agricultural extension offices are the best sources of information about the control of fungal diseases of avocadoes.
Opossums eat avocados and will climb trees to get the fruit if they don’t find any on the ground.
How to Harvest an Avocado
Avocado fruit doesn’t ripen until it falls from the tree or is harvested. Avocadoes are ready to be harvested when they reach a certain weight or size, which varies according to the variety. A mature fruit will ripen indoors at 60-75 degrees F in three to eight days after it is picked. Avocadoes don’t have to be harvested all at the same time; you can harvest them as needed.
Growing Avocados From Seeds
While you can definitely grow an avocado tree from a seed (aka pit or stone), the tree will probably not be the same variety as the one the seed came from. Because avocado varieties do not come true from seed, you don’t know what variety or quality of fruit you’ll get when you start with a seed. Plus, an avocado tree takes 10-15 years to go from seed to flowering and fruiting. If you want to grow an avocado tree for its fruit it’s best to buy a healthy two- to four-foot plant from a reputable nursery.
Want to learn more about growing avocados?
Avocado Growing in the Florida Home Landscape
Home Fruit Production-Avocado
Click the following link to find amazing information about avocados from the California Avocado Commission.
What can you do if it does not give fruit?
Nail the tree… use 3 or 4inch nail. Hummer three to four in different part of the tree. Expect the fruits in two seasons after
What can you do if your cherry tree produce tons of flowers but the cherries dry up before ripping. The trees produce a nice harvest the year before.
I got 23 Avocadeo trees at my Apartment in my bedroom at the window & still growing & good heath Avocadeo seeds to make a beautyful trees.
Do they have avacado growing on them?
Does the tree need to be trimmed in order to produce fruit?
I plant an avocado tree through seed and it’s start fruiting after 15 years. 2 season it has produced big and a lot of fruits. Last year because too many in one branch it’s broke the branch before harvest. I saw brown colour in the middle of the branch look like rotten. After investigation I found the termite had attact the tree. What should I do. It will kill the tree like my mango tree if I don’t do something about it.
I’ve had a seed planted and it’s been sprouted for about 7months inside. The leaves keep dying and falling off as new ones come on. Now the top is starting to turn black and get hard. What am I doing wrong?
Same here, leaves fall off then new ones come?
We had this happen too. Our water had too much salt so we started giving them distilled water.
We let the top few soil get dry before we water and we only give them indirect light and they’re living!
I have a young tree, bought 4 years ago. Last year we got maybe 5 avocados, but animals got to them before they were even ripe. How can we protect them, so we can eat them?
I have three year old tree but I am worried the trunk is super slim and it wont sustain the continual growth… What to do?… I don’t want to kill it either!
Help please