🥑 🥑 Ripe & Ready: Join us for a dip into all things avocado
Holy Guacamole! You won’t want to miss this avocado presentation:
Avocado Talk and Share with Joe Real
May 30 from 2:30 – 5:30Â at the Live Oak Grange in Santa Cruz.
We were able to get Joe Real to come talk about avocados, specifically grafting to existing trees, and container growing of avocados.
You might know Joe from various Facebook groups, showcasing his multigrafted fruit trees, and micrografts on avocados.
Joe Real, a Principal Programmer at Vericheck, Inc., is also a consultant to various farms and agricultural company startups. He’s been a member of the California Rare Fruit Growers (CRFG) for over 25 years. In addition to his programming work, Joe is passionate about winemaking and has extensive experience in grafting fruit trees. He’s shared his expertise on various grafting techniques for different types of fruit trees through various forums. Joe has also been actively involved in container growing fruit trees for several decades.
In addition to Joe’s Avo-lanche of Insights,
We’ll have a meet & mingle
AÂ member-to-member share of greenwood
(avocado, cherimoya, feijoa, guava, sapote, other greenwood).
Fertilizer pick-up – details to come from Eric.
You might be wondering how to collect greenwood from your trees. We have just the thing!!! While the info below is for avocados, it pretty much stands for all other greenwood. Just be sure to take your scions a day or two before the event, keep them in a ziplock bag, and label them with the variety (if known), details about the flavor/ripening time, and your name and location.
I had been eyeingÂ
Gray Martin’s video on how to select avocado scions. And then Elaine sent a post byÂ
Greg Alder, from the San Diego area, which also includes Gray Martin’s video. Thanks Elaine!!! 🤩
Freddy Menge warns that Gray Martin’s video is fine, but he uses some really weak looking yellow trees (avoid for scions). As far as Greg Alder’s post goes, it’s good, but remember, he’s in San Diego.
One thing to remember is that he is writing from San Diego county, and his recommendation to pick scions in late winter does not apply to our area. Â
We find that some scions can be had almost any time of year, but the sticks with actively pushing buds in the initial stages of a growth flush are easier to find in the spring through summer.
Â
 These are the scions that leap into action instead of malingering toward doom.Â
Â
Our grafting window is also shifted later from San Diego’s.  Early May through mid July is usually safe for us in the coastal zone. Later grafting may require setting up frost protection for the tender new growth.Â
Â
Always create shade protection for new grafts, and everything will fail without strict policing of the rootstock regrowth. Never allow even a trace of new sucker growth below your graft, no exceptions, not even the green base of an eliminated shoot. Any hope of promoting its own tissue will trigger an avocado (more than other type of fruit tree ) to partition off the scion, ensuring its death.Â
