Avocado is one of those fruits that you can consume almost daily. It has multiple health benefits including improving heart health, blood pressure, fiber, vitamin C, B, K, and potassium. The buttery texture of avocado is very tasty to eat and healthy as well.
Avocado plants are possible to grow in general places and even possible to grow in odd climate conditions.
Let's understand how can you grow avocado plants in your garden.
Avocado farming in pots
First of all, you need to understand that avocado fruits grow on avocado trees. When we say we are going to grow them in pots, it simply means that for the initial growth of avocado, we use pots to make a perfect plant.
Let's start to understand the growth of avocados in pots for your garden.
Season of growing avocado
In India, avocado farming starts in the spring season. You can start avocado farming from the end of February to end of the March. It is not bad to grow avocado in the late spring season.
Once your avocado plant becomes a tree, it can handle too cold or hot temperatures throughout the year. But too much temperature diversity can affect the growth of avocados.
Requirements to grow avocado in pots
Let's understand all the basic needs to grow avocados from the initial stage of the plant to transplanting them to become a tree-
- Soil type and pH
Generally, we can use proper water-draining garden soil for avocado farming. Direct use of garden soil is not effective in avocado farming. So we make it more fertile by using the required fertilizers.
Soil pH must be between 6.6 to 7.5 for the avocado plant. Soil pH maintenance is necessary for the better growth of avocado plants.
- Temperature and humidity
Avocado plants and trees can grow easily in cold to moderate temperatures. A freezing temperature or very hot temperature is bad for avocado farming.
The best temperature for avocado farming is known between 25 to 30 degrees Celcius.
During this temperature range, humidity can vary from 20% to 60% for the entire cycle per annum.
- Varieties of avocado seeds
Although we can grow avocado plants directly from the avocado fruit seeds. But for best quality, we do treatment of fresh avocado seed.
Although there are more than 400 varieties of avocado few of them are popular.
Following are some of the popular varieties of avocado fruit seeds-
- Hass
- Fuerte
- Pinkerton
- Zutano
- Stewart
- Bacon
- Reed
- Pryor
- Wurtz
- Fertilizers
Avoid chemical fertilizers. Instead, we can use organic compost, cow dung compost, or vermicompost. Coco-peat and chicken manure are very good alternatives to chemical fertilizers for avocado farming.
For avocado farming, we use them with garden soil as a fertile soil mixture for initial growth. Later, when we transplant the avocado plant, we can use these organic materials directly with the soil either in raw form or in liquid form.
- Type of containers
Always better to use lightweight portable containers or pots for avocado plants. We transplant avocado plants multiple times so the container must be ideal.
Market plastic containers are very good for the initial growth of the avocado plant but every pot must have drainage holes in the bottom.
These holes confirm no extra water in the pot because it can rot the plant roots.
Process of growing avocado in pots
Soil mixture preparation
For avocado plants, you need to prepare a soil mixture of garden soil, sand, and vermicompost or organic compost.
Take 40% garden soil, 30% vermicompost, 20% coco-peat, and 10% sand. Fill the containers 60% and then according to roots, plant the avocado plants.
Growing from seeds
Avocado farming is very different than ordinary seed-growing techniques. To grow avocado from seeds, you need to sprout the seed either in water or in soil.
- Sprouting and configuration of avocado seed
Avocados sprout perfectly when we keep them half in soil or water. In all mediums of sprouting, we keep the sharp end of the seed upwards and a wide portion downwards in the soil or water.
To sprout in water, take a wide glass container(to see growth). Pin very thin wooden sticks at 120 degrees to each other to adjust the seed half in water and half out of the water. Wooden sticks provide a horizontal stand to seed and are easy to handle. For better sprouting, change the water every 5 to 7 days till you get perfect sprouting at both ends of the seed.
Similarly, repeat the same process with the soil. You just have to cover it half in a fertile soil mixture(soil+compost).
Within 7 to 9 weeks, the avocado seed turns into a small sprouted plant.
- Grafting
For now, we are guessing that you already know that seeds don't show the same results as their parental plants were. This biological result forces us to use the grafting technique for a better result.
Grafting is a method in which we add two different tissues by physical arrangements. Most of the time, grafting gives the best results.
In the case of avocado, we apply to graft on a 15 to 20 cm long plant. We cut a lateral portion at 3 inches above the soil surface. Now, we take a newly appeared cutting from a parental tree(lateral cut). Make a 'V' shape in the lateral cut of the main plant and fix the cutting in that. Bind it with the help of tape or any thread. Spray some water and let the tissues match with each other.
Growing from grafted nursery plants
If you want to escape the sprouting and grafting process from seeds, you can directly buy grafted nursery plants.
Make a proper soil mixture(garden soil+vermicompost+sand).
Fill 50% to 60% of the container with soil mixture and plant the grafted nursery plant in the container properly.
Vertical stand or support
You need a vertical metal or wooden stand to support the plants vertically. With further growth, avocado plants start to bend from the stem because of the heavy upper portion. You can bind them with the help of a tie or thread.
Transplantation
When the plant starts to grow taller, you can transplant it into your garden soil. For that, repeat the same procedure to make ground soil fertile. You can escape coco-peat this time with organic compost. Later, you can apply liquid compost mixture directly to the bigger plants.
Irrigation of avocado plants
Avocado farming irrigation depends on the condition of the moisture in the soil. If moisture is too less or too much, then it can hurt your avocado plant's health.
You need to check regularly that the soil has enough moisture. Don't wet the soil too much and don't let it dry for more than a day.
In the case of the avocado tree, it can handle less moisture but for better flowering and fruiting, irrigation is important to maintain moisture in the soil.
Composting
For small plants, you don't need to do too much composting regularly because of enough fertile soil mixture.
Every 45 to 50 days, you can apply vermicompost to the avocado plants. Try to use dry compost. Liquid compost can affect the growth of small plants initially.
When the avocado plant becomes a tree, you can directly apply a liquid form of compost to the roots of the tree.
Flowering
With grafted plants, you can easily see the flowering to fruiting in 3 to 5 years. But without grafted seed plants, it takes 8 to 10 years to bear fruits.
Avocado flowers start to appear after 3 years. Most of the flowers fall and don't convert into avocado fruits. The flowers convert into fruits left on the tree.
Avocado flowers are slightly yellowish and greenish. They bloom for 2 days and then process further fruiting.
Avocado fruit-bearing
After the blooming of avocado flowers, they start to convert into fruits. From the day of blooming, it takes almost 5 to 7 months to become an avocado fruit.
Thus, it takes almost 4 years to get the first yield of avocado fruit.
Harvesting of avocado
It is better to harvest avocado fruit in the morning. Harvest the fruits just before fully matured so you can transport or store them longer. Fully matured avocado fruits melt fast.
Press the avocados and check the maturity of the fruit. If it presses easily then harvest them first.
From the first harvesting, you can harvest 2 to 3 times from a single tree in a season. It is because many fruits become mature at different periods.