by Greg Alder | Jun 27, 2025 | Avocados |
While I like many things about the Lamb variety of avocado (one of which is how late the fruit can hang on the tree), one of its weaknesses is that it tends to make a lot of avocados one year but little the next. Alternate bearing, this is called. So a handful of...
by Greg Alder | May 23, 2025 | Avocados |
A “super” avocado tree is one that make lots of fruit, more fruit year-after-year than other trees of the same variety in a particular grove. The most important question is why a tree is super. And secondly, can you make a copies of it? (I want one in my...
by Greg Alder | Apr 19, 2025 | Avocados |
You can get lucky and plant an avocado tree in your yard and find success on your first try. But for many people, myself included, it takes killing a few trees to learn how to grow an avocado successfully in a particular situation. One situation that many people find...
by Greg Alder | Apr 18, 2025 | Avocados |
Unlike many other fruit trees, avocados are hard to root. Rooting is where you cut a branch off a tree and stick it partly in the ground or a container so that the cut branch will form roots where it is buried. It’s a way of copying, or cloning, a tree. Try this...
by Greg Alder | Apr 4, 2025 | Avocados |
Stefan was driving, taking me on a tour of avocados in South Africa, but he took a turn on a dirt road into a banana plantation. We got out of the truck and I followed him into the dark and humid canopy of green acres and acres of Dwarf Cavendish plants. We walked...
by Greg Alder | Feb 22, 2025 | Fruit |
On peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, and pluots, I want all of my fruit within reach. So I prune these stone fruit trees down to a height of about seven feet. But I also want my trees to make fruit at chest height, and waist height. I want the fruit within reach...
by Greg Alder | Feb 14, 2025 | Avocados |
It is courageous to make predictions in public, especially in writing. Most of us sit on the sidelines and criticize privately or just shrug our shoulders and say, “Who knows how things will go?” Not Gray Martin. During the 1980’s and 90’s, Gray worked as a botany...
by Greg Alder | Jan 24, 2025 | Avocados |
Strong Santa Ana winds blew through my yard yesterday, which revealed whether my young avocado trees had proper support. I shot video for you: A few related posts: “How to plant and stake avocado trees” “Training young avocado trees” Thanks for...
by Greg Alder | Jan 17, 2025 | Avocados |
In June of 2023, I planted a GEM avocado tree. It was a good-looking tree, on top and bottom. The leaves showed healthy new growth and the roots were abundant and with new white tips. I planted in the best way I knew, a way in which I’d planted many trees before that...
by Greg Alder | Jan 10, 2025 | Fruit |
Is this the year that you learn to graft? Would you like to grow a new variety of fig, peach, dragon fruit, avocado, plum, mulberry, or cherry? Then these events are for you. Winter is the season for the California Rare Fruit Growers “scion exchanges,”...
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