3/15/2016 ~ Sadly I became so stressed by Wells Fargo’s foreclosure action on my home that while I regularly watered my three avocados, I failed to see that watering the little one, big one, and huge one the same amount, every two weeks, was great for the little one, bad for the big one and pretty nearly disastrous for the huge one.
I love the avocado trees so much, yet I didn’t accurately see them while I was so stressed.
Thus, the little avocado has flowers, large leaves and is in the second day of opening flowers. I used the end of some hemp twine to dust the flowers, in hopes of transferring pollen, and because it’s doing so well I’m leaving it in the plant room with the skylight I had installed last fall.
Meanwhile, I take the big avocado and the huge avocado outside every morning to be in the sun, in the hope that they will regain their strength.
The big avocado didn’t entirely lose it’s leaves. A few remain on the stubby branches of the little tree.
It’s set a lot of thickish buds which are not opening as quickly as the slender leaf buds on the huge avocado. The buds seem most like those of the little avocado that had enough water all winter long and is flowering.
Given that the plant doesn’t have leaves to feed the flower buds as they turn into avocados, I’m not sure that it will be able to produce avocados, despite its best efforts.
Plus, it’s the avocado that arrived with root rot. In transplanting it to a larger container a huge portion of its roots fell away. They were brown and unhealthy looking, exactly the way you’d expect with root rot.
The huge avocado, with its long branches, lost almost all its leaves so it’s not surprising that it set leaf buds rather than flower buds.
Its leaf buds are slowly opening and seem to grow at a rate of about a quarter inch a day.
This huge avocado was a really lovely tree last year, so it’s sad to see what stress did to my vision and thus to it. I don’t know if it will make flowers buds later, after it has the leaves it needs to nourish flowers and thereafter fruit.