Too many avocados???

[sgroth]

I've got a 7 year old avocado tree that I grew from a seed. It's about 15 feet tall with two trunks. This is the first year it's fruited, and it's gotta have 100 avocados that are about the size of a child's fist. It looks like the fruit is weighing down one of the stalks so much that some of the upper branches are only a few feet off the ground. I'm worried the trunk might break.

Should I try to prop up the trunk or tie the two trunks together?
Should I cut off some of the top branches?
Or is this normal and nothing to worry about?

[applestar]

First you might want to thin -- intentionally cut off -- some of the developing fruits. I've no idea what the typical rule of thumb is for avocado, but for apples and peaches, the usual guide is 3 or less per cluster if you want good sized fruits. You also thin so that mature fruits won't touch each other.

For supporting the laden branches, I've heard though have not tried myself that T-shaped or Y-shaped support with swimming noodles covering the top bar makes good supports. Another method is to tie a sort of a splint along the the branch to help support itself.

Would you make sure to come back and let us know how the avocados taste after they mature? We had a discussion recently in which we speculated on whether avocado plants grown from seed would produce fruits that are "edible", "any good",... mostly negative predictions although some of us wondered if there wasn't just as good of a chance that the fruits would taste as good as or better than the parent fruit.

Thanks!

[bewildered_nmsu]

The big tasty Hass avocados (named for Rudolph Hass who dicovered the cultivar) you find in supermarkets are all grown from cuttings taken from one original parent plant to ensure good taste and consistency. Bushes grown from seed will likely not have the same characteristics or flavor.

[bonsaiboy]

Thinning will also cause the plant to put more energy into fewer fruits.

[sgroth]

I tried supports, thinning, trimming, all with mixed results. I took off several branches that were wieghted almost to the ground, thinned some other branches, and put a big y support on the more heavily laden of the two trunks of the tree (it splits at the base).

I still got dozens of avocados that never grew bigger than my fist. A few of them were pretty good after letting them ripen more than I would have expected to. Most, however, were tough and rubbery. We only tried about a dozen or so, and left a bunch on the tree.

After most of the fruit had been harvested, the whole supported side of the tree died off as well as some of the unsupported side. Don't know if the support caused it. The ground underneath was soggy for about a month. I trimmed off everything that was dead, and the much smaller tree that remains seems healthy. We're hoping for fewer bigger avocados next year.

[applestar]

Thanks for coming back and letting us know. It sounds like you got some fruits to enjoy. Rubbery, huh? I've had some rubbery avocados purchased from the store, so that might not be a solid indication, though I'm no expert.

Some more ideas to try:
‣ Thinning at marble size
‣ Supporting the tree "Maypole" style.
‣ Macerating the avocado seeds for oil?

Good luck!