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Messages - z_willus_d

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26
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: August 04, 2020, 03:56:30 AM »
Brad, I feel like your attacking my manliness (Lol).  Hey, no one ever called me lazy in the yard; instead, I get in trouble for getting after it too much.  But, yeah, there's something about this banana tree that's intractable for me.  It's rooted into a bunch of river rocks, bounders, brecia, maybe some cement.  I'll give it another go.  I assume digging all the surrounding pups will have some damage on the roots of the one or two I want to maintain.  I'm sure they'll bounce back in time though.  Thanks.

27
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: August 04, 2020, 12:45:53 AM »
Dig them out?  Seriously.  Ouch.  That sounds like a task for 80's Arnold.  Right now, the whole thing is like a brutish, organic mass of impenetrable dinosaur hides.  The pick fork just bounces off the dried-over, leather decapitated base.  I guess I could try a jack-hammer.  A few years when I tried killing it, I hit it with a ton of glyphosate, but it seemed not to have an impact.  I'm banned from using the stuff now, and I'd like the tree to survive but in a more controlled fashion.  I'll see what I can do to dig into it.  Corm is a new term to me, so I must have some research to do.

Thanks guys!

28
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: August 03, 2020, 08:26:53 PM »
Brad, thanks for sharing the video.  I  hadn't seen you post it before.  I'm enjoying the watch through (thumbs up).  So, I have one banana tree (from previous owner), and I tried to cut it to the ground at one point, but it just will not die.  So I then tried this last year to limit it to one main "stem", but it just keeps throwing up shoots all around its base.  I decapitate the shoots, and in 1-2 days they replace themselves.  Do you have any tips for how to manage the banana root/base so that it will stop focusing on new growth/shoots/pups and just direct its energy into the one main shoot?

29
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: August 03, 2020, 01:59:39 PM »
We did a side by side with ardith(top), lamb(right), reed(bottom).
...
Lamb also very good, nice flavor.  More avocado flavor than the other 2 but maybe not as enjoyable as reed but still very good.  Tastes like a good store bought hass.  Not as good as regular has this time of year but they will improve and hang until October here.  By then they start to sprout and grow roots in the fruit and it ruins them.  They still taste fine but they get a lot of roots going at some point. 

Hi Brad,

I'm salivating over your Avocado board there -- looks great.

I have a young Lamb that's holding on to several fruitlets in my side-yard container project.  Just to be clear for my own planning, fruit that sets in early/mid-Spring will then hold onto the tree through the next year's Spring, Summer, and into the next year's fall, right?  So that fruit is on the tree for over 18-months?  Also, does this tree (or any Avocado tree for that matter) struggle to set the next season's fruit when fruit from the preceding is still hanging?  Does that deter flowering or tamp down on successful successive pollination and fruit set/hold?

Thanks!

30
Do you think 6 avocado trees in 50 gallon containers can produce this much (100 avocados per tree)?


I'm assuming this question is quasi-facetious.  I think 100 avocados for a young tree in a container would be a very blessed harvest indeed.  You best bet for achieving results like that might be to go back and read through Dr. John Yonemoto's presentation that I referenced at the start of this thread here:
http://htfg.org/conferences/2016/2016_JohnYoshimiYonemoto_GrowingandHarvestingtheBestAvocados.pdf

Good luck!
-naysen

31
Did you ever get any fully ripe avocados? Do they grow in Sacramento area?
Hi, last year I got 3 or 4 of which most were quite good.  These were from three mature trees in large 50-gal container pots.  I've since transplanted each into my front yard.  This year the five side-yard avocados are holding a fair amount of fruit.  This is their 2nd season in the RootMaker/Builder containers.  The first year they were too immature to hold any fruit.  This year, they are doing much better with the Pinkerton looking the best with 20+ fruits of about half full maturity (size).  This is followed by the Lamb-Hass, with quite a few fruit as well.  The Sir Prize and Stewart had a lot of fruit at the start, but are now down to 3-4 each.  The Holiday is the worst of the bunch, currently holding onto just one sole fruit.  We're having an extended heat swell here, so I'm hoping the plants don't decide to drop a bunch of fruit from the stress.  The last few times we had multiple 100F+ days back-to-back, I had several fruit drop.

So, that's where I'm at currently.  I think you can definitely grow avocados here, but you need to properly protect and baby them.  You need the right varieties (not necessarily what I'm growing).  And you need patience.  In any case, I've learned a lot over the years, and I think there's a chance I'll get some decent harvests in the long term.

If you have any specific questions, let me know.

Good luck.

32
Everything is looking great Mark!  When you bag your fruit in those protective bags, do you ever have problems with early molding or decay on the fruit?  I tried using the bags on peaches, apples, etc. and the lack of airflow seems to doom them.  Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't situation.
He bagged the graft not the fruit.
Oh, I missed that.  Thanks.

33
Everything is looking great Mark!  When you bag your fruit in those protective bags, do you ever have problems with early molding or decay on the fruit?  I tried using the bags on peaches, apples, etc. and the lack of airflow seems to doom them.  Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't situation.

34
Looks like another stellar platter.  Y'all are eating like royalty there.  Enjoy!

35
That's very cool Mark.  Do you graft onto many seeds like that one.  If you could get a healthy mother plant, how much room do you really have for more trees?

36
Hi Mark, those platters look amazing.  My sungolds are just coming in.  I can't wait for the rest of the garden to begin harvest.  I'll be waiting on the 50 or so candidate avocados for another year.

Remember, I didn't go bottomless for a couple reasons; listed here in order of severity (High->Low):
1) These trees are planted along the side of my house adjacent to the neighbors yard (just a couple feet over across a fence).  They have very mature fruit trees (plum, pear, cherry, etc.) that have roots which have invaded most of my yard.  I planted some blueberries in the ground some 20' away from these trees, and found the younger blueberries in a pot produced loads more and grew, where as those in the ground were insipid.  They were overrun with the neighboring tree root system.  The same has been true of a garden bed I keep that's in the vicinity of those trees.  I'd have to dig a trench of 2-3 feet down and lay down some metal siding to attempt and address the problem, but the ground is so boulder, stone, and rock ridden, it would require some heavy equipment and a lot of space to do that.
2) I wanted to keep the option to take some of these trees with me if we ever decide to move to a new location.  I know that transplant will be very rough on the trees, but they should be able to survive the ordeal.  If you read up on the RootBuilder site, they talk about wrapping the container in burlap material for transporting.  I think the idea is you just remove the container, pull-up the burlap and transport.  I don't think that was meant for trees that are multiple years in their site.  Maybe I'll get to test the idea some day.
3) Well, I had a three sometime ago, but I can't remember it.  Oh well, (1) and (2) suffice.

Thanks for always chiming in.  It's gotten quite (it seems), though I haven't been keeping up as much.

37
Hi Seanny,

Thanks for responding.  I think I wasn't clear in my previous response.  The younger trees are doing well.  Sure they drop a lot of fruit, but it's expected.  It's my older tree (~10 years) that I am concerned about.  They were transplanted to ground a couple years back.

38
Hi Mark, I think once a week deep watering is probably idea where the roots are well established and you have decent water retention.  In my case, these five trees are in containers with the roots blocked at the bottom, so they don't have the deep tap root and ability spread far and wide.  That said, as I noted, they are (or were) escaping at the bottom and feeding along the mulch layer just above the root barrier I placed over the ground.

I have three more mature trees I planted in my front yard in the ground.  They set incredible amounts of fruit (like thousands) but nearly all dropped.  I think one tree has three fruit right now, and another has 2-3.  I'm wondering if the soak tubes I embedded within the mulch layer that runs over those trees could be providing too much water, since they tie in with my drip system that runs several times a day.  The soil is well draining, so I don't think the trees are sitting in a puddle.  It's backwards that the nearly 10 year old trees planted in the ground with trunks 2-3x in diameter have so much less fruit than these ones in the side-yard that get less light, aren't afforded any ground rooting, and are half the age or less.  I'll figure it out one day.  The leaves on the three front yard trees look nice.

I hope you have a great garden this year.  Send some pics as the tomatoes and everything ripen.

39
In haste while pruning I took off a newly grafted Orange Sherbet branch holding 17 nice fruit.  Oh well.  I mailed a friend some scions yesterday.



Mark, I think I would have ruined my month if I had taken that branch off.  That fruit looks amazing.  I was watering with a tin can the other day and popped off the largest Avocado on my Lamb-Hass (and  nice and shaded it was too).  I had a sour mood the rest of the day after that one.  I'm curious, what is your water schedule for the mature avocados you have there.  Assuming 90F+ temps, are you watering daily with a good soaking?

40
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: June 15, 2020, 05:47:04 PM »
I hadn't gotten any hits on my latest updates on my side-yard Avocado "project" thread, but I thought it was (or might be) of interest to some.  If so, you can find the posts here:
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=27629.100

The avocado trees are doing well in their expandable pots.

-naysen

41
I've finished expanding the five expandable RootBuilder 2 enclosures I have holding the five avocado trees along the side of my house.  One warning for anyone (including future me) trying this is to take care not to allow mulch, dirt, debris, detritus or otherwise to build up around the bottom rows of the perforated "container."  What can happen, as was the case with my trees is the roots will find themselves an escape route out the bottom rungs of the enclosure where ever they don't meet atmosphere at the exit holes.  This presents a serious issue when trying to expand the container, especially for root sensitive plants like an Avocado.

My solution was to cut out the container losing the bottom two rows of holes (or ~2-3").  This shortened the height of my expanded container but allowed me to expand without further damaging the roots.  The roots were spreading out the lower row(s) of holes and developing under my wood-chip mulching, where I assume the excess water was leaking and spreading out over the weed barrier I had laid down beneath the mulch.

I'm sure my avocado roots took something of a beating from all the stepping on the mulch and extraction process, so I've certainly dropped a good 75% of my fruit.  But I'm sure the long term outlook is improved with these plants with the 3 additional panels of RootMaker.

I'd love to hear from anyone else using the containers on how they've managed with them, results and outcomes.

Thanks!

Here are some pics of one of the containers during the expansion process:






42
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Leaf browning problem on avocado tree
« on: June 09, 2020, 12:25:36 AM »
Wow.  I found that extremely helpful.  Thank for sharing the link.  I struggle with the under vs. over-water scenario.  It's great to confirm that both conditions result in droopy leaves.

43
Hi Odin-

Thanks.  It's been a long journey to get here, and it continues... I have the small quarter-inch soaker dripline hose you can buy at the H.D./Lowes/the web, embedded in circles around the base of the trees in the RootMaker containers. I'd estimate each sees around 5-8' of hose, and there is a 0.5 GPH dripper every foot along the hose.  Right now, I have them set to water with my drip system for all the other backyard plants (but not the main garden and several other trees I have) 3-4 times a day.   I was doing a 4-min dwell, but I recently turned it up to 8-min with the crazy heat we're getting here.  I am probably over-watering, but I saw some droopy leaves in the midday a while back when it was only in the mid 80's, so I decided better to waste some water than have the trees drop too much fruit just for lack of water.

Also, my soil mixture is very well draining.  In fact, I'm in the tedious process of expanding the RootMaker RootBuilder 2 containers for the first time.  I'm learning about a few things that I overlooked that I will show with some pics later.  The soil mix I'm using right now is roughly 1/3 Peat (and/or Coco coir fibers), 1/3 decomposed granite, and 1/3 a mix of this and that including things like aged chicken manure from my birds, worm castings from my worms (and some purchased), pathbark fines, and various amendments like humic acid, gypsum, mycos, etc.

A lot of the roots for the trees are escaping the RootMaker containers at the bottom periphery of the container where I mistakenly allowed mulch (the black wood chips) to abut and build-up .  This gave the roots, over time, and escape route through the first one, two, and a few cases three RootMaker air-holes.  Once the roots had a way out, and with all the water run-off, they took off and spread flat along the available space below the mulch and above the weed guard layer I ran to block the ground below.  This means that when I walk on that mulch, I likely damage the roots.  It also makes it damn near impossible to actually expand the container, but I've developed a painful work-around.  I'll describe that in a follow-up post along with some pics.

44
I haven't given an update on the side-yard Avocado trees since early Oct. last year.  The trees have fleshed out somewhat and have dropped most of their "last-year leaves"; their replacements are coming in well enough.  I've also had good fruit set through Spring, however roughly 80% of the set has now dropped, and with the 105F+ highs here this week, I'm actively seeing and expecting more dropping.  The Lamb-Hass and Pinkerton are holding the most fruit at present, and they set at opposite ends of the side-yard alley.  Certainly, the Pinkerton gets far more sunlight, which may now be a detriment for the first time this year with the temps where they are at.  The other three trees are holding between 2 and 6 fruitlets with the droopy Holiday performing the worst of the bunch by any metric.  Here are the pics with some annotations.

Here's a view from the start of the side-yard alley with Lamb-Hass in the foreground:


Lamb-Hass:




Stewart (note the 3-panel wider container):




Holiday:




Sir-Prize:




Pinkerton:




Melting hot:


45
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: May 25, 2020, 02:42:50 PM »
Hi Brad, thanks for the info.  My small lamb in the side-yard is best fruited next to the Pinkerton.  Sure, they will not hold, but I see what you mean.  I need to give an update post soon.  I screwed-up the Expandable Containers with a simple mistake that anyone might make.  I want to give the public service announcement on that at least.  Have a great Memorial Day!

46
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: May 25, 2020, 02:10:45 PM »
Kris, I did the same last year.  The Surround seemed to hold up fine through the year, and with plenty of rain sessions.  I need to get out there and "paint" the top branches of my exposed trees today.  Thanks for the reminder.

47
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: May 25, 2020, 01:51:04 PM »
Great line-up and pic Brad.  Thanks for sharing the assessment.  How does lamb-hass compare to the original Hass in your opinion?

48
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: April 24, 2020, 08:33:00 PM »
Good to know that Lowes is an option for Reed.  I'll keep an eye out.  Thanks.

49
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: April 23, 2020, 11:39:33 AM »
Thanks Kris.  I remember you mentioning that Green Acres had some in your areas from a year or two back (four winds growers was the source I believe).  I've stopped into that nursery and checked many times since but have yet to get lucky.  I sometimes ask if they can special order, but it never works out.  I have a single seed I started here as well, which I may try my hand at grafting on again.

50
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Avocado thread
« on: April 23, 2020, 12:32:21 AM »
Dang I went to my local nursery for strawberries which they were out of and just stopped by some avocado's that just arrived and left with a Gwen tree. That makes the 5th new avocado tree this spring. I've added a Carmen, D'Arturo, Reed, Gem and Gwen to my collection. My other trees are Pinkerton, Fuerte, Bacon, Mexicola, Stewart and Wurtz.
Nice! I wish I can do the same but I have too small of a back yard.
Where'd you find the Reed.  I've been searching around for one for a few years.  I'm growing in containers as well.  I have five in container and three older ones in the ground.

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