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« on: January 20, 2016, 04:38:17 PM »
Yeah I've been looking around and there's really nothing here unless I want to spend years on a great seedling avocado quest. Backyard growers get the same 2 grafted varieties I've already mentioned, and the commercial growers aren't doing any experiments since they already have a go-to variety that produces and sells well - no reason to take the risk. (Same deal here with mango. This should be a mango paradise - there are seedling mango trees on every corner along every street and freeway, you go out, look around, you'll see a mango tree. They're all healthy and at the moment they're all full of flowers. I fantasize about going from tree to tree looking for a decent fruit one season. But in a place where mango literally grows like a weed, where we could be up to our necks in amazing mango varieties, there's one grafted tree available. And it's beyond mediocre. I'm not sure which it is, but it's large to huge fruit, pretty yellow-orange-red skin when ripe, smells fantastic, and then inside it's full of fiber and jelly seed, and sometimes very bland, though I admit sometimes the flavor is as nice as the scent, if it wasn't for all that fiber! SUCH a disappointment. Other than that there are the small yellow ones, some of which are ok, I think they're all seedlings. But anyway that's mango and we're talking avocados here.)
I'm really inclined to try to bring down some scions in the not too distant future, and I'd still be interested to know what you experts think would be the safest bet for our climate and a good contrast to Choquette, hopefully different fruiting time too.