9 Comments

1. 

   Will Hutchison on October 3, 2021 at 2:02 pm

   Aloha Greg, quick question here:
   We have a very active worm composting thing going on at our house, I use the castings on our fruit trees. I spread them on the surface around the trees every few months when I harvest the bins, often covering up the castings with wood chip mulch and/or comfrey leaves. I water with collected rainwater on your schedule (thanks!) and we’re not in a very hot place (University City), However, I have noticed that our avocado trees, which are young, seem to experience rapid leaf senescence with the application of the castings, they’re growing new leaves all the time, but shedding relatively new leaves really quickly too, faster than the new ones grow in. Do you have any knowledge or experience with worm castings & avocados behaving this way?

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     Greg Alder on October 3, 2021 at 3:10 pm

     Hi Will,
     I don’t spread worm castings under my avocado trees but I do find (and my chickens find) many worms under the mulch under my avocado trees. So the worm castings are there nonetheless.

     It’s not a good sign that mature leaves aren’t hanging on for long. Is there any chance that your feed for the worms is salty?

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     Pieter Dorrestein on April 24, 2022 at 12:34 pm

     I live in university city as well and struggled with avocados too – initially. Usually your symptoms means the tree is planted to deep and/or too little water.

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       Will Hutchison on April 24, 2022 at 11:36 pm

       Thanks man! I’m stoked that the heavier watering has helped, I must have been underwatering them. I can’t do much about planting depth now, ugh. Although they’re all planted on mounds, and most in a raised planted as well. The trees have grown a new set of leaves this spring and are prospering once again. The windy weather seems like it knocked a lot of baby avos off of them, unfortunately, I was hoping for a bigger crop next year!

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         Pieter on April 28, 2022 at 6:05 pm

         Great to hear they are bouncing back. If they are raised then all you have to do is water a lot. The final thing that has really helped is mulch, mulch and more mulch. Hope you get a crop this year and a huge one in the next.

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2. 

   Will Hutchison on October 5, 2021 at 7:55 am

   Thanks Greg! Interesting idea, it does look like salt burn on the leaves. The worms’ food is almost all raw veggie scraps from the kitchen or produce from the garden that did not make it. Pretty much no processed foods in there. The bedding is shredded brown bags, which I don’t think is salty. We got about .50 inches of rain last night, which hopefully flushed salts from around the tree mounds. Our yard’s soil is salty from decades of irrigation, as evidenced from a soil test about a year ago, perhaps that’s the issue: their roots have reached the lousy native soil beyond their mounds. Could the wood chip mulch on the mounds be salty? Maybe with continued irrigation with captured rainwater, in addition to the recent rain, we’ll see improvement? Worms are known to be very good soil improvers, I hope they can do their job! Mahalo, Will

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     Greg Alder on October 5, 2021 at 12:14 pm

     Hi Will,
     One other thing I’d think about is whether nearby plants or trees are drinking some of the water you’re giving your young avocado trees. That can make it look like leaf burn caused by chloride or underwatering, but actually it’s water stealing! Native plants like oaks, sumacs, and buckwheat are among the plants that I’ve most often found exploiting the irrigation given to nearby plantings, but lots of other large plants or trees do it too.

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       Will Hutchison on October 6, 2021 at 12:10 pm

       Thanks Greg! With rainwater tanks as full as they’ve been in months, I will water much more heavily, deep soaking the trees. They’re planted on mounds, in a raised planter, so the danger of overwatering might be reduced. There is an old & large woody hedge next door that might be sucking up the moisture.

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3. 

   Jun on June 8, 2022 at 3:27 pm

   Hi Greg,

   I have never tried a Nabal Avocado. Is there anyway I can buy some from fruits from you for the 2022 season?

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