What Are The Best Tasting Avocados?

If you listened to the full interview with avocado grower/Master Gardener Greg Alder in Ep. 360 of the Garden Basics podcast, you got a good fundamental education on growing backyard avocados. We covered such topics as:

* Growing Conditions for Avocados

* Fertilization Tips

* The importance of watering avocado trees

* The Role of Mulch

* Soil Testing for Success

* Cold Tolerant Avocado Varieties

* The Flavor Profile of Avocado varieties

* Top Avocado Varieties to Grow

* Understanding Avocado Pollination

* The “Single Tree” productivity of avocado trees

* Growing Avocados in Different USDA Zones

* Avocado Growing across the U.S.

* Managing Greenhouse Conditions for Avocado Trees

Again, go back and listen to the original interview in the Garden Basics podcast, Episode 360.

The part of our chat with Greg Alder that intrigued me the most, though, was our brief discussion of the flavors of various avocado varieties. It is that part that is excerpted above, at the top of the newsletter. After all, why plant something you wouldn’t be thrilled to eat? His choices for the best tasting avocados included the Hass, Gwen, Sharwil, Reed, GEM, and Fuerte.

The newsletter podcast includes the ravings of another fruit-oriented lunatic, Ed Laivo, who has spent most of his adult life talking about, growing, and selling fruit trees. His latest venture is a fruit-based You Tube page “Ed Able Solutions”. The excerpt above includes the audio of one of his You Tube postings, praising the Reed avocado.

Another fruit fanatic whose opinion I respect is Tom Spellman, formerly the Southern California representative for Dave Wilson Nursery. When posed with the question, “What are your favorite tasting avocados?”, Tom replied:

“Fred, I agree with all of Greg’s picks. Some other favorites of mine are Pinkerton, Jan Boyce, and Stewart. Best recommendations for California home growers is to plant a small collection of varieties including both A and B flowering types that will give you fruit year round. For example, If you had the Fuerte, Hass, Reed, and Stewart, you would have four overlapping varieties so you can almost always be able to harvest from two. Right now I still have Hass and am starting on the Reeds. Hass will finish about the time Stewart comes on. However, in Northern California, you also have to consider adaptability.”

Oh yeah, adaptability to other areas. As Greg Alder pointed out in our Garden Basics interview, avocados have a narrow sweet spot for growing conditions: not too hot, not too cold, the correct humidity, minimal drying winds, the right amount of water. Parts of the San Francisco Bay Area come the closest to providing that avocado ideal climate. Here in the Central Valley of California, where temperatures have a wider swing, a successful backyard avocado tree usually has these conditions in common: afternoon shade, protection from heavy winds, lots of mulch, reflective surfaces for winter heat, such as a nearby concrete patio, or a nearby west or south-facing fence. And of course, plenty of water to maintain evenness of the soil moisture. Oh, and that soil - preferably not too much clay - should drain fairly quickly.

Years ago, as the area’s chief Avocado Skeptic, I pointed out in a Farmer Fred Rant! Blog Post entitled: “Avocados in Sacramento? Good Luck!” that the varieties that seem to have the best success here are Bacon, Zutano, Mexicola, Fuerte, Pinkerton, Jim, Sir Prize, and Stewart. However, “success” does not necessarily equate “outstanding taste”.

But trying to choose avocado varieties based on the information regarding their heat and cold tolerances is not an easy task, nor the complete criteria.

From Greg Alder:

“There is very little info out there on cold and heat tolerance of avocado varieties because the assessment of this is more complicated than it would seem.

One, varieties tolerate cold and heat in different ways. For example, sometimes one variety's leaves get burned in heat while they hold on to their fruit (Pinkerton) whereas another variety's leaves do not get burned but they drop their fruit (Reed). So which is more heat tolerant?

Two, many factors beyond the scion variety affect an individual tree's performance in cold or heat: rootstock, timing of the cold/heat, underlying (invisible) health of tree, crop load, and more. So you can see a row of trees all of the same variety with variable damage after a hot or cold spell.

But here is what I can say: My place (in Ramona, east of San Diego) is both slightly too hot and too cold for avocados every year. My trees get some cold damage and some heat damage every single year. In this kind of environment, I have learned two main lessons:

* Protect trees until they are about six feet tall, and then they can recover well from cold or heat damage. Avocado trees are wimps when young, but they get surprisingly resilient after that size.

* All the best varieties are worth trying. There is not a large difference in heat or cold tolerance among the varieties that have the best fruit.

Here are a few links to posts Greg has written where he describes or show some minor differences between varie