An Ode to my Two Hour Lamb Hass Tree

[John B]

Well, I was excited to finally pick up a new 15 gal avocado tree from Clausen nursery in Vista, ca.

Little did I know I would have to protect this tree like I was driving miss Daisy. Weaving around crazy divers on the way to the freeway, I finally lost her as I swerved around an Uber driver who stopped in the middle of the road to check  his phone.

The trunk snapped as the pot moved in the trunk. At least I have some good $75 compost and dirt.

Ok, ok, not really an Ode, more of a vent session. I don't think I'm destined to keep an avocado tree. At least she was with me for a couple hours.  Next time, I'm bringing the 1 ton pickup to protect these trees.

What tree pickup fails have you had??

[Tommyng]

If it’s above the graft union the tree should do ok.

[spaugh]

shit happens, oh well. 

clausens, probably atkins also has 5gal nice trees for around $25.  just go get a replacement they grow super fast anyway. 

[Jaboticaba45]

Sorry for your loss...hopefully it broke above the graft like mentioned above. When I bring trees home, I always give them the priority. They end up getting the best seats making it uncomfortable for the humans . Makes an 10 hour trip seem like forever, but in the end I know it's worth it. I put the pots in garbage bags so soil doesn't spill all over the car if they tip over. I have lost small branches before, but never had a major accident with the trees in the car. Pretty good record as almost all my trees come from FL vacations. Gotta watch out for those crazy drivers!

[johnb51]

John B, johnb feels your pain.

[sc4001992]

John B, looks like it broke off at the graft union. At least now you have many scion wood to graft onto other avocado trees, or sell them on this forum.

[850FL]

Once I went through the grueling effort to uproot a 15 foot satsuma and then defoliated it by hand and spend an hour trying to weasel it through the car window so basically the root mass was in the car, the trunk through the window and the canopy above the car and tied down a weird way. Risked getting pulled over and dirt all over the car, while trying to splash water on the roots the whole time. Then took it up a hill and dug a hole in a spot where I thought it’d do best. Turns out it was part shade but the time it got sun was super intense so after a couple weeks it just ended up dying, right below the 10ft nectarine transplant that took half a day to work out, and ended up getting infested with borer beetles and dying after a few months as well. Lol

[K-Rimes]

I bought a 10' tall barbados cherry about 3 hours south of my house that took several hours to excavate and prune/root prune to fit into my long bed diesel truck, got it home and it never flushed once... Just died a slow death. That was a good lesson to only buy potted plants or local in ground ones without a major drive. It was worth a shot though, I guess.

[John B]

Thanks for the sentiments and stories. Unfortunately, it snapped in two places, including the section below the graft. And it's so low, I can't rally graft anything to it. Most of the growth was new , so it won't be good budwood, although the main trunk area does have a little I may salvage.

I hardly take the trip up to north county (90 miles round trip) so I need to wait. Prices down here in central San Diego are way too high for what you get now.

So it goes...

[spaugh]

Hey John, you should grow some pits.  its cheap and nows a great time to start them.  even hass seeds are fine rootstock, I have several trees on hass roots.  start like 10 or 15 seeds and grow that.  you wont be paying, and you will have more trees to work with and experiment.

[jtnguyen333]

I remembered buying a 15 gallon sir prize from clausen 2 years ago and have to put it in the trunk of my 4 door sedan.  On my way back to mission valley, I never drove above 55 mph and I still end up losing 2 big branches..ouch!!

Well, I was excited to finally pick up a new 15 gal avocado tree from Clausen nursery in Vista, ca.

Little did I know I would have to protect this tree like I was driving miss Daisy. Weaving around crazy divers on the way to the freeway, I finally lost her as I swerved around an Uber driver who stopped in the middle of the road to check  his phone.

The trunk snapped as the pot moved in the trunk. At least I have some good $75 compost and dirt.

Ok, ok, not really an Ode, more of a vent session. I don't think I'm destined to keep an avocado tree. At least she was with me for a couple hours.  Next time, I'm bringing the 1 ton pickup to protect these trees.

What tree pickup fails have you had??

[John B]

I bought a 10' tall barbados cherry about 3 hours south of my house that took several hours to excavate and prune/root prune to fit into my long bed diesel truck, got it home and it never flushed once... Just died a slow death. That was a good lesson to only buy potted plants or local in ground ones without a major drive. It was worth a shot though, I guess.

That is some commitment! Too bad about the outcome.

Hey John, you should grow some pits.  its cheap and nows a great time to start them.  even hass seeds are fine rootstock, I have several trees on hass roots.  start like 10 or 15 seeds and grow that.  you wont be paying, and you will have more trees to work with and experiment.

Good point! Plus the kids would like a fun project.

[850FL]

Last hurricane knocked a fence on a Joey avocado, squashed it to a stump lol
Fortunately I returned it and got my 90$ back.
You may be able to return yours too. Most big box stores have 1 year warranties.
If not, chop up the top part and try n root those cuttings. May be a crap shoot but, just don’t over saturate the perlite. No sense in not trying..
Also, take care of the stump. It WILL come back, rootstock or variety, it’s still valuable in a respect. Just take care of the roots. They absolutely HATE shock. I’d mix up some gypsum in its irrigation water- I heard it’ll ward off phytos and other bad fungus

[sc4001992]

John_B, I see 6 good scion cuttings you can take from you damaged tree. Just graft the green wood as long as it is not soft, it will take. You can try rooting as 850FL mentioned but I have not had any luck rooting my cuttings yet. One rooted green cutting started to leaf out, turns out it died with no roots formed, but I'm still trying to root avocados until I get success.

850FL, that is a funny story, makes me laugh because I had a similar experience spending hours digging up a large mango tree and putting the tree on the roof of my car by myself and driving it home before I got stopped (only 1/2 mile). Took another hour to dig up the hole to plant it, then after 6 months the tree died. Also dug up my large rare variegated Valentia orange tree (10ft) I had for 10yrs from the backyard to plant it in the front yard and it died after 3 months. Your story also reminds me of the time I drove up to Las Vegas to pull the engine and trans out of a Lexus SC400 (V8) and put it in my 81 Nissan Quest van (removed all the back seats) and then drove it back home and unloaded it before my wife came home from work in one day 9-10hrs total turnaround by myself.

Kevin, I dug up a large plumeria tree (8ft) and drove it home, planted in ground and it survived so that one was worth the effort.

[850FL]

One rooted green cutting started to leaf out, turns out it died with no roots formed, but I'm still trying to root avocados until I get success.

Tried many a’ hass cuttings and 0 success. It’s typical for cuttings that don’t even root to throw out some new leaves then die. However I did get Lula cuttings to callous in perlite, but I think they damped off because I misted a bit too much.

Put an ad up recently saying I’ll dig up your fruit trees and got a hit. Somebody actually wants me to dig up their 30 ft grapefruit trees. I’m considering chopping way back to the trunks and main limbs with a couple small branches and totally defoliating. The tricky part is preserving as much root mass as possible, which can be very aggravating to dig around. Might be worth a shot?? haha

[850FL]

Your story also reminds me of the time I drove up to Las Vegas to pull the engine and trans out of a Lexus SC400 (V8) and put it in my 81 Nissan Quest van (removed all the back seats) and then drove it back home and unloaded it before my wife came home from work in one day 9-10hrs total turnaround by myself.

Wow, nice!! Toyota/lexus makes solid cars, I hope it was a standard though haha. And you swapped the engine and transmission in less than a day?? Had to fix a beetle clutch once and that was like a week ordeal, the most annoying vehicle possible to work on, using special tools

[John B]

John_B, I see 6 good scion cuttings you can take from you damaged tree. Just graft the green wood as long as it is not soft, it will take. You can try rooting as 850FL mentioned but I have not had any luck rooting my cuttings yet. One rooted green cutting started to leaf out, turns out it died with no roots formed, but I'm still trying to root avocados until I get success

You are correct! Well, I made 4 but I'll cut the large ones in 2. Kept them in water overnight in the fridge to stiffen them up then wrapped in buddy tape. I've got a lead on a beat up 5 gallon wurtz that I'm picking up tomorrow for next to nothing.

The main problem is that there are no real buds ready to push on all this wood, and in my limited experience, those are the ones that slowly died (due to my lack of patience).

I too have never had good success rooting fruit tree cuttings, but I'll give it a try. Only my fig and poms are easy to propagate that way. Had a lemon that lasted a year and stopped growing.

Funny story about the car! Things we won't tell our wives (ask forgiveness, not permission) .  Wish this forum had "like, agree, funny" buttons as some of the other experiences are unreal. Things we do for plants.

[sc4001992]

John_B, if there are no leaf nodes that did not already have a growth already then it might be tough for anything to grow on your scions. Your first photo showed some cuttings that you could take with leaf nodes intact. Good Luck with your graft.

850FL, sounds like a crazy task to dig up a tree that big. I'm planning to dig up a 10ft multi-grafted citrus tree (7 varieties) and put it in a temporary pot (55 gal trash bin). But to pull out the tree & rootball with soil from the hole after I finish digging, I plan to use my engine puller to get it out enough to slide/roll it into the pot. Then its pretty easy to stand up the pot and since it has wheels will make it easy to move around. As for the 92 SC400, it was an auto, but the engine & trans was such as good deal I bought it for my spare backup since I had 2 of the same car, one Black and other Gold. Now that I junked both cars since they both hit over 300K, I have to disassemble the engine & trans to get rid of it. Next project is to spend some time trying to rebuild my 69 vette (100% restoration needed), still sitting in my garage not running. I'm rebuilding the carb now.

Yeah, I agree those avocado cuttings are tough to root. I grafted 70 seedling avocados this Jan and as I cut each seedling, I plugged them in the pot to see if any of them might root, but so far 0 % success rate.

I should have mentioned earlier that John_B could have tried to save the tree by re-attaching the broken halves of the tree. I have done this with my Valentine tree (1" branch with too many fruits) and my Sumo tree (same thing, 3/4" branch) and both are now happy and continue to grow and fruit just fine. The trick is to quickly re-attach the two parts as soon as possible before the cracked ends dries out. I'm not sure if the Avocado tree would work the same way, just need to experiment and try it next time.