Avo Season

For as long as I can remember, we've never had to buy avos. You see, our house has a really big avo tree in the garden. It's survived tree-houses, building renovations, landscaping projects and was used as cricket stumps for years :-)

Every year some of the avos get attacked by birds and squirrels and fall to the ground. These result in small trees popping up each season. For years the gardener has just pulled these out. Last year, however I decided to plant them in nursery bags and see if I could  grow avos in the other garden... I've read up and I understand it takes up to 7 years for an avocado tree to produce fruit. The 50 trees (no half measures here!) we've got in bags are now two years old. I unfortunately lost 4 trees to snails (Yuck! Unfortunately the snail eating chickens are at the other house...) as they haven't recovered afer having their leaves all removed.

Just a few of the nursery trees

The big avo tree still has a few big avos in the top branches (we've eaten all of the easy to reach ones already!) and I've noticed that it has started to flower. They don't really look like flowers at all, they're a sort of cream coloured bunch of bumps... The bees arrive en mass to polinate which is wonderful. The nursery trees haven't made any flowers so I'm sure it's safe to plant them out. Shout if you'd like one!