In the spring of 2023, many avocado trees throughout California had a superbloom. During that period I watched the avocados on trees with lots of flowers mature rapidly alongside the emerging flowers and even start dropping to the ground in some cases. For example, see my post and videos of these GEM avocado trees doing so.
(The photo above is a Gwen tree having a superbloom in the spring of 2023.)
Here in the winter of 2023-2024, I’ve been seeing some avocado trees again starting a heavy bloom (although mostly not as heavy, or “super,” as spring of 2023). My Pinkerton tree is currently starting a heavy bloom.
See what’s happening with my Pinkerton tree and its fruit in this video:
If you have a tree that is making a lot of flowers while it is also carrying some fruit (this usually happens in the late winter or spring), you might find that those maturing avocados are ready to pick a bit earlier than in years when the tree is making few flowers. Test it out.
See more about how avocado trees flower in my post here.
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Perhaps after the tree put its energy into maturing the fruit early, it could now move on to making blossoms? Can we distinguish between cause and effect? It almost seemed as though you were suggesting that plot twist in your cool video!
I so want a Pinkerton. I planted one along with a Lamb and both got roasted in 2022. I devoted their soil mounds to massively successful tomatoes in ’23. I’m ready to try again.
Maybe. The story I tell myself is that the tree starts making a lot of flowers and then says, “Now I don’t have enough energy to hold this old fruit AND start making new fruit.” So it rapidly finishes the fruit development, and if we don’t pick it before too long, the tree sheds it.
When I watch the process happen, the two things (flowering and fruit maturation) happen about simultaneously though. As soon as I see the tree pushing out abundant flowers, I also notice that the fruit is changing in maturity. This is easiest to see in varieties where the avocado’s skin turns black when mature.
It’s also helpful when you can watch two trees of the same variety side by side. Last year, I watched GEM trees side by side. One would be blooming like crazy and the fruit was blackening and dropping. The other was not flowering or barely flowering and the fruit was still green and none were dropping.
At least you made the most of those mounds!
There may be signals going back and forth between the two processes. How avocados “decide” what they do is so complicated! If they were easy, they wouldn’t cost so much. 🙂
I guess that’s related with avocados biannual bearing habit. In an off year the tree accumulates nutrients and the following year has plenty to push out flowers and ripens the few “off year” fruits earlier .
My fuerte avocados never fully ripened 2022 (thin outer layer softened but inside stayed rubbery), even if I picked them in March. I figured my tree is deficient, my mulch layer was insufficient and I fixed that.
Following year happened a super bloom and by
November the fruit was already good to eat and softened completely.