Avocados

[terry]

We have a tree which was grown from seed and now it is producing an abundant supply of avocados. Unfortunatley we do not know when they are ripe. Can anybody help me in this area please? Thankyou.

[Anastasia]

OOOH lucky you! I LURVE avocados! Do you mean how to tell when to pick them?... I've read they will not go ripe on the tree, so you can leave them there till you want them. Once you pick them they will go ripe. I guess wait till they are a suitable size then pick?

[Jez]

G'day terry, welcome to the forum.

Some varieties the fruit will fall when ripe...a bloke I know up here is always giving them away a few bagfulls at a time to anyone who'll take them because he gets sick of running over them with the ride-on mower! :lol:

But yeah, as a general rule for all varieties, just pick them when they reach a good size - all the varieties I've seen the stem is in two parts and you cut at the natural division (about halfway down the stem) between the upper part of the stem attached to the tree and the part of the stem attached to the avo...you'll see when you look at it if you haven't noticed it before.

Once picked, if you put them in brown paper bags in a shady place of the kitchen they'll gradually ripen up nicely, then they store in the fridge for a good while. Ours are Shepherd avocado's...they even keep once cut up without going brown like the Haas and other varieties do...also very good for massive quantities of guacamole which store a long time in the fridge! :D

You can leave them on the tree for a while to ensure a more steady supply rather than picking them all at once...pick the biggest first of course and then let the others get to full size.

Post another message if you have way too many to deal with - I have an avocado cookbook with lots of great recipes which freeze well, so I can post a few of our favourites if you're struggling to use them all.

[christopher]

We only ground collect from our trees. Avocadoes, even most grafted cultivars, will drop the fruit when fully developed but not yet ripe. We know they are ready to eat when finger pressure can put a dent in the fruit.

We have lots of grafted trees, early and late fruiting cultivars, and even more random crap shoot trees from seed, all of which are tasty! Our non grafted trees are much bigger, even fom similar ages, and produce more. Our hass grafted tree produces nice avos like you expect, but not my favorite by a long shot.