Avocados are a super fruit that’s on the rise. More and more recipes are using them. You can use them for salads, sandwiches and dips like guacamole. Avocados can even be used in breakfast dishes or desserts. With all of these new avocado trends, it’s hard to keep up buying enough. Luckily, growing your own avocados is an easy and rewarding experience!
In order to make sure that you always have healthy avocados for cooking, we’ve put together a quick list of helpful tips to ensure optimal avocado growth and health for your avocado trees.
Tips and Tricks
1. Place your avocado tree in an area that receives full to partial sunlight. Avocado trees perform best if they receive at least 6 hours of direct sunlight a day.
2. If you keep your avocado tree indoors, place it by a large, sunny window. Southward facing areas of the home generally receive the most sunlight.
3. To increase the humidity in the air for your avocado tree, take a spray bottle and mist the leaves with it. You can do this up to two times daily.
4. Avocado trees enjoy staying dry. Don’t overwater them. Check your soil every few days – once it’s dry, about 2 inches down below the surface, it’s time to give your trees more water.
5. Trees that are planted in containers often need water more frequently than trees planted in the ground.
6. Give your trees a slow, deep watering by putting a hose at their bases and counting to 20 seconds, or until you see water coming out from the bottom of their pots.
7. Wait until your avocado trees have experienced one year of growth before fertilizing them. After waiting a year, fertilize them four times a year with a well-balanced citrus fertilizer.
8. Avocado trees are very sensitive and drop their leaves at the first sign of trouble. Even a cold draft from an air vent will cause them to shed their leaves. Don’t let this alarm you – it’s normal.
Harvesting Avocados
Your avocados will be ready to be picked when their skin fully turns a purple to black color. They ripen off the tree and generally need to sit for 3 weeks, until they’re slightly soft to the touch, before being eaten. Check out our selection so you can have your own!
Written by
Blair Brown
Blair is the Content Marketing Manager at FastGrowingTrees.com, and though she's not your traditional gardener, the planting world is definitely growing on her (pun intended!). She's enjoyed digging into plant care and maintenance and growing her plant collection, especially with exotic indoor varieties.
