How to Grow Hass Avocados: Quick Care Guide

What's up everyone. Kevin here from Epic Gardening. Today we're talking about avocados, which is the tree behind me, but specifically we are talking about the famous Haas avocado. Now what's interesting about it is it actually wasn't the most popular avocado. Fuerte avocados were the most popular and then someone named Rudolf Haas came along and what happened is he actually was such an avocado fanatic, but avocados were so expensive that he would collect seeds wherever he could. So he bought seeds from someone and his plan was to then grow that seed out and then graft onto the Fuerte branches. But every single graft he tried failed. And so his children said, Hey dad, why don't you just let the seed you bought grow out and see what it actually turns out to be? So he was frustrated. He said, okay, I'll do that. And what he ended up growing was the eventual mother of the Haas avocado. So this, a beautiful, popular, delicious variety of avocado, by far the one that dominates the market and one that you can really grow in your garden. So in today's video, we are going to be talking about some specifics of avocado care. This is the avocado that I will eventually be planting in a later video, but we're using this as an example. This one came from my friends at Fast Growing Trees, which ship amazing, amazing fruit trees, bushes, shrubs, et cetera, all around the nation. So I highly recommend you check them out. But let's go ahead and crack into our avocado care video. Light temperature, our first two things that we're talking about when it comes to growing avocados. So this is a pretty well-established avocado tree. As you can see, this is my friend Shane's house at Dark Horse Rowing. He's got a YouTube channel, but he also has a pretty epic future and budding homestead out here in San Diego. So thanks to him for letting us shoot here. But what we've got is a south exposure that's just really beautiful. No obstructions. Avocados are going to want full sun as much as you can give them. And then as far as temperature goes, San Diego and Southern California, there's a reason why they're grown here because we have a nice temperate, tight band of temperature. We're not really getting too far below freezing and we're not really pushing into the 95, 100 degree temperatures too often. Avocados are going to have a hard time both above and below those ranges. So you really want to try to keep them within them or take some measures to protect them with some shade cloth of some kind or, or a strategic planting location. Or in the winter months, you can even wrap them if it comes to that. Of course, this is a little bit big, might be hard to wrap this one, but if it's a smaller tree, you can definitely protect it from freezing cold. Unlike a lot of trees that we've talked about, avocados are pretty water hungry. They're going to want a lot of water, especially when they're younger and just getting established as the feeder roots are pretty close to the surface. Sometimes they can even take water multiple times a day and it doesn't really get better as they mature and as they start to fruit. Mature fruiting avocados can take up to 20 gallons of water per day. So that's part of the reason why they're so expensive. Part of the reason why there's shortages. Of course, there's many other factors at play there, but they are a very water hungry plant. That being said, they don't want what we call wet feet. So they don't want consistently soggy soil. They just want moisture that they can then use and drink up even more later on. As far as soil goes, avocados want to stay more on that sandy loamy side rather than that more clay or clay loam side. Because again, they don't like wet feet. Clay soil holds a lot of water. Therefore you want to avoid that. Actually what commercial growers will do is, let's say they're going to put a new avocado tree into this hole right here. Pretend that this tree isn't here. What they would do is they would usually dig down about a foot or so and then about three and a half feet wide and improve that entire area. Then they would create a one or two foot mound and plant the avocado into that mound so that the feeder roots can spread out and get everything that they need. And then what they'll do is they'll take maybe six or so inches of mulch, much like you see these shredded up wood chips here, and they'll layer these. And you can see the wood chips kind of fall off as we get closer towards the trunk because you don't want to push your mulch right up against the trunk. It's going to get wet. It can cause rot. It's just sort of not a good recipe for the health of that trunk area. So you can kind of mulch and make sure that you keep that soil moisture, but just not push it right up against the trunk. So let's talk propagation and the fruiting phase of your avocado tree. So Haas avocados, if that's a variety that you want to grow, that's not one that you can grow from seed. It's not going to be true to type. You have to get a grafted variety. So you have to buy it from a nursery that you like and that you respect. So the one I'm holding in my hand, it's from Fast Growing Trees. It's about three and a half, four feet tall, pretty well established one. Can't wait to get this one on the ground pretty soon. But you have to buy it from a nursery like that. I like Fast Growing Trees because they ship pretty much nationwide. There's some regulations depending on the specific varieties, but pretty much, and it's a really high quality product. So highly recommend. Check it out in the podcast description. Now when it comes to fruiting, avocados are interesting. There's two types generally of avocados. You have your type As and your type Bs. Haas falls in the type A, which means that it's going to flower from February through May and the flowers are going to be female and then they close, then they open and then they're male. So there's a type B that's the exact opposite. And that's why if you're planting and you really want good pollination, sometimes it's a good idea to have a type A like a Haas and a type B avocado close by so that female and male flowers are open at the same time so that the bees and pollinators in your area can actually pollinate effectively instead of having to sort of play the waiting game. So that's it as far as fruiting goes. So let's talk about two problems that you can run into. Actually it's more like three problems you can run into. New growers often experience that the flowers will fall off early on. That's not a huge problem. That's somewhat common. And then usually that sort of corrects itself. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. However, if it goes on and on and on, then of course that's a sign of something more serious. Let's go ahead and grab a leaf from this tree and discuss some potential nutrient issues that you might run into. You can see that there's yellow in between the veins. Usually that's more of a sign of a zinc deficiency. Nitrogen is more of an overall yellowing of the entire leaf, stunted growth, et cetera. So it does make sense to go ahead and look at some leaf symptoms of nutrient deficiencies, see if you can spot the one. And if you really want to get crazy, first of all, you should have already tested your soil. But what you can do is you can actually get a test specifically of the leaf to see what's going on or just ask someone who's really knowledgeable. You can ask your county extension agent as well. But the most common two you're going to run into, again, nitrogen, which of course is the most common nutrient deficiency. It's the one that's used in the most abundance. And then zinc can be another one that you run into. The Haas avocado guys from the discovery of Rudolf Haas basically out of frustration that the fact that his fuerte avocados would not graft and the graft would not survive, he just decided to grow the seed that he had out and lo and behold it was a Haas or it ended up being the one that was named Haas. And now that's the one that we're eating, all of us millennials on our avocado toast. Pretty crazy. And this was a broad strokes care guide. So we're going to follow up and plant this at some point in time. We are also going to check in on my friend Shane's amazing avocado trees. One here, one here, one here. And if you have any other avocado questions, drop them down in the description. And if you'd like to check out a high quality avocado tree that you can buy pretty much anywhere, fastgrowingtrees.com. I'm leading that down in the video description as well. And until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.