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To: Cicero
Good luck with your avocado trees. When I was a little boy, we got an avocado pit to sprout in our apartment and put the seedling into a flower pot. By the time I left home, it was up to the ceiling. No avocados--I think it needed some cross pollination. But it was a beautiful tree

Yes, Avocados do have special polination needs, and without bees and other insects in your house it wouldn't do well. Haas is the most popular avocado because of its ease of peeling and the nice taste and texture. But a grove of Haas avocados does not self-polinate well.

I'm not an expert at this by any means, but what my rancher friends tell me is that you intersperse "breeder" avacado trees throughout your avocado population. I have a "Zutano" avocado tree with three Haas and one Lamb Haas around it in the shape of a "W", with each tree 20' from its neighbors. The Zutano is the breeder for the four Haas. The single Lamb Haas is to lengthen the harvest season because it ripens later than the Haas.

40 posted on 01/15/2007 12:46:34 PM PST by MarineBrat (My wife and I took an AIDS vaccination that the Church offers.)
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To: MarineBrat

Interesting.

I still remember that we carefully split the avocado pit with a knife (after eating the avocado), to speed things up, but without opening it up too much. We stuck three or four toothpicks into the pit around its circumference, and set it half out of water in a drinking glass, with the toothpicks resting on the edges of the glass. After the roots started coming out the bottom of the pit and a sprout appeared at the top, we set it in potting soil, and that was it, except for constant transplants into bigger pots.

I don't remember what kind of avocado it was, except that the leaves were dark green and shiny.


42 posted on 01/15/2007 1:01:28 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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