Avocado

---

Growing Avocado Trees in the North East Florida Landscape

---

The video above is the first Avocado tree I ever planted in my home Landscape. It was somewhere around 15 years ago and while it took a while to produce fruit for me once it started…It started! I get hundreds of fruit on this tree nearly every year in my St Johns county home garden.

Bacon Avocado

Brogdon Avocado

Choquette

Donnie Avocado

Florida Hoss

Hall Avocado

Joey Avocado

Lila Avocado

Lula Avocado

Marcus Pumpkin

Oro Negro Avocado

Winter Mexican / Mexicola Avocado

We can Grow Avocado Trees in the Jacksonville and St. Augustine area?

30 years ago when answering this question the answer was no, you would have to protect them from freezes now the temperatures have shifted and varieties that tolerate some cold have been found by all of us ‘Zone Pushing” gardeners that try everything anyway whether it is supposed to work or not. Thankfully when asked this question now, we can safely say yes we can grow Avocados in NE Florida!

Micro-climates matter. North Jacksonville and South St. Augustine can get as much as a 10 degree difference in temperatures during the overnight freezes we sometimes get here in NE Florida. The farther you go inland, the cooler those night temperatures tend to be. A lot of things can influence the success of tropical plantings including exposure to North winds, large existing trees in the area, the proximity to large bodies of water like the St. Johns River or the Intracoastal waterway, the ocean, local lakes, even retention ponds can influence the surrounding night temperatures by a few degrees.

Hedging Your Bets for success with Avocadoes in NE Florida Landcapes

While there are many varieties to choose from that tolerate a fair degree of frost and light freezes. It is always best to plan for the worst. You never know when we will get a winter with less than our average temperatures or record breaking lowes that can damage or kill tropical plant selections. Heres what you can do to help…

Like all tropical plant selections remember to consider frost in your planting location when deciding where to put your tree. You will want a spot that gets the afternoon sun when they are flowering in spring, and the south side of a house , building large tree etc will help with winter cold protection. In the winter time when there is frost on the ground and on your windows, take a walk around your yard and look at the frost line. There will be areas where there is frost and areas where there is not. Utilize those frost free areas for your Avocado trees and save those areas that the frost is on for things that need winter chill hours to produce fruit, like apples and peaches and plums.

If you are in one of the colder winter areas of town like out near the airport, on the Northside or Westside, callahan etc. have a plan in place to protect the trunk. You can wrap them with blankets, pile mulch and straw around the base, keep them cut small ( get the book Grow A Little Fruit Tree) where you can put a cover over the entire tree that reaches the ground to trap in raidant heat, hang old style Christmas lights from the branches, gardeners have come up with some pretty ingeniuos ways to keep their prized tropicals. And if you know your in an area that gets heavy freezes but really want a variety that may not do well, consider a large pot that you could lay down on the ground during a freeze and cover or bring indoors! Any way you find to do it that works for you is going to be well worth the effort. Picking an avocado off the tree and ripening at home, you will just never believe the flavors are so much better than you can imagine! You’ll never miss a grocery store Hass again!

While these tips can help by far the largest factor on the success or failure balance that you can do to tip the scales in your favor is picking a variety that will work for your homes microclimate. Not all trees you will find locally being sold will be tolerant of the temperatures in our area.And just because it works for your friend across town doesn’t mean it will work for you. Get to know your yards cold spots and hot spots, For avocadoes a simple google search of the name of the avocado and the degree of cold tolerance will bring up the temperature that they have been known to tolerate. So as long as you know what your average and lowest temperatures your area receives, that is how you will decide whether it will survive for you or not. For me if it will tolerate 32 degrees, I am comfortable with planting it and not covering, my home is within a mile of the St. Johns river , there are lots of old mature live oaks close by and in neighboring properties so I don’t tend to get to many nights where the temperatures drop down to freezing for more than a few hours. I remember thinking one winter where we had really low temperatures for 3 nights in a row a few years back that I was going to loose my Avocado trees, but they went right through that 30 plus hours of 27 degree temperatures in my area and low 20s in some areas, and they did so without so much as loosing their blooms that of coarse were already on the trees in late January! Not even did my trees survive, they gave me fruit that year! Not even my loquat blooms fared so well, I was amazed and delighted.

So far all the varieties that I selected for our area are working well for me, the only one I have lost to cold so far is one that I knew I would ( eventually) but couldn’t help trying it anyway… I wanted to try a Russel, you know the one with the really long neck full of avocado, I planted a three gallon that I found at a big box store so it wasn’t to much of an investment to loose and it lasted three years before that really cold winter I was talking about took it out of existence. Russell is cold tolerant only to 45 degrees and temperatures under 30 will kill it. Where as the Winter Mexican / Mexicola I have had for near 15 years in my home landscape can tolerate temperatures down to as low as 20 degrees and survive. So variety is the key to success, just do a quick check on the name on the tag before you buy!

Last but not least, having a healthy tree before winter temperatures comes in can make a world of difference in the overall success rate of your Avocado planting. Making sure the trees are planted into well draining areas, mulched heavily, don’t have grass or other vegetation competing with their roots for resources like nutrients and water, and have the nutrients available to them goes a long way. Avocado trees are heavy feeders it takes alot of nutrients to produce those fabulous fruits here in Floridas sandy soils you may need to provide that for them. UFIFAS recommends additional nutrients to be added in the way of a tropical plant food every two months to the surface of the soil underneath the trees canopy. Additionally, young trees are more cold sensitive than mature trees and having an established root system in the ground before winter hits helps overwinter your trees.

The 3 Main Types of Avocado Trees and What That Means For You

Not all avocado trees are created equally, they have been classified into three main groups and then classified by type A flowering or Type B flowering. All of the trees you find to plant here in Florida will either fall under one of those three groups or be a cross hybrid between two of them. Each group comes with its own unique traits characteristic of that group type of tree. And each variety will be bisexual with both female and male flowers on the same tree and either be categorized as type A or B based on when the flowers form and open as male or female blooms. Sound complicated, maybe Ill try to break it down below. Familiarity with these traits and what each one brings to the table tells you a bit about what to expect from your fruit tree.

The Mexican Type Avocado

• native to the tropical highland areas of Southern portions of Mexico
• anise scented foliage
• Blooms January to February
• Harvest June to October
• Fruits are smaller less than 1lb
• smooth skin
• medium to high oil content
• Cold tolerant to 24-26°F on young trees
• cold tolerant to 18-26 °F on mature trees

The West Indian Type of Avocado

• native to the tropical lowlands of Guatemala and Mexico
• non scented foliage
• Blooms February to March
• Harvest May to September
• fruit size varies widely fro 1-5 lb fruits
• Leathery smooth skin
• Low oil content
• low cold tolerance, 28-30°F on young trees and 25-30°F on mature trees

The Guatemalan Type of Avocado

• native to the tropical highlands of Guatemala and Mexico
• non scented foliage
• Blooms march to April
• Harvest September to January
• fruit size varies drastically, half pound to 5 lb fruits
• skins are rough textured and thick
• oil content medium to high
• cold tolerance 26-28°F on young trees and 24-28° F on mature trees

Avocado Flowers and Pollination

The avocado flowering patterns are unique in many ways. A mature tree will have millions of flowers each flowering season. The flowers occur in loose branching clusters along the branches in determinate clusters that end in a flower bud and at branch tips that are indeterminate that end with a vegetative growth bud where the tree will continue to grow from that point after flowering is finished.

Avocado flowers are bisexual and the same blossom will function at different times as both male and female. In botany this is known as synchronous dichogamy. Each blossom will be open for two days and the timing of the male and female flowering phase is distinct from one another. When the flower first opens it is in the female phase and the stigma can receive pollen at that time from open male flowers. That female blossom will be open for a 2-4 hour time period and then close. On the next day that same flower opens again as a male flower and sheds its pollen from the now upright stamens.

In addition to their unique way of flowering, they have a unique timing schedule for flowering that differs among varieties. Each named selection of avocado trees blossoms will follow one of two separate flowering time schedules and will either be a type A Flowering variety or a or a type B flowering variety.

Type A Flowering Avocado Trees

Opens as female on the morning of the first day , stays open for 2-4 hours as female, closes and remains closed through the afternoon and night and morning of the next day to open that evening on the second day as a male flower.

MORNING DAY 1	AFTERNOON DAY 1	MORNING DAY 2	AFTERNOON DAY 2
OPENS FEMALE	CLOSED	CLOSED	OPENS MALE

Type B Flowering Avocado Trees

Type B flowering varieties have flowers that open as female in the afternoon of the first day, remain open for 2-4 hours and close late that afternoon. Those same flowers will then reopen as male in the morning of the second day.

Morning Day 1	Evening Day 1	Morning Day 2	Evening Day 2
CLOSED	OPENS FEMALE	OPENS MALE	CLOSED

Here they are side by side organized by the time of day so you can easily see how type a and type b tree flower timing aids cross pollination.