Avocado not as healthy as my other avocados

[eez0]

About 5 weeks ago, there were very hot days where I live, about 35C (95F).

From all of my trees, the avocados were the one hit harder, which was expected as they are in the most sunny area of my backyard. Most of their leaves were sunburned.

I have a Hass, Fuerte and Reed. The Fuerte and Reed have recovered very well, however, it looks like the Hass is not keeping up with them. It looks rather sad with curly leaves.



These two are Fuerte and Reed:





The thing is that I think the problem is not really related with those hot days over a month ago. This Hass also has a thousand of ants living under the mulching, like many of my other trees, but particularly this one and an orange tree have the most.

Could it be that these ants are damaging the roots?

[Aiptasia904]

Ants are probably taking up residence in your mulch and/or steering aphids onto the leaves of your avocado trees. All of them look like they need more watering. You need to rake back your mulch around the tree trunks into a doughnut shape. Give the mulch a good four inch (10 cm) space between the mulch ring and the tree trunk. Mulch decomposition can actually rob fruiting trees of nitrogen as it decomposes, so it's better to create a little water trapping berm by making a ring around the trunk instead of a pile touching it. Think doughnut, not volcano.

Aside from that, water your avocados with about 5 gallons of water every two to three days depending on how hot it is if you haven't had at least 1" of rain lately. You can use an empty food can like a tuna fish can to measure your water during rain storms by placing the empty can in your garden and then measure if with a ruler after it rains.

Treating the mulch for ants is easy enough using either pesticides like amdro ant baits or organically with a combination of cinnamon bark, diatomaceous earth or similar natural ant deterrent. You can also put a ring of petroleum jelly around the trunk which will block the ants and aphids from climbing your avocado trees. Or you can use something like sevin dust or liquid sevin in a sprayer which is a good contact pesticide that washes off with water.