Saturday, August 03, 2013

Coastal Avocado

Off and on I've been trying to find info about what the nursery guy told me was a "coastal avocado". My little tree is not yet a meter high so I haven't been real excited about it but it seems to be doing better with the rains. I also didn't include a foto but probably posted one in the past.

My interest peaked again when a neighbor said someone has a tree full and we're invited to pick a bunch. In the foto below of the tree you can't see an Avo but it is really full. We used what locals call a gancho to pull the fruit down. It's a long bamboo pole with a basket on the end, same tool that is used to pick mangoes. So we got about 10 with 4 for me. I've been using a gancho to get fruit from my roof off the two large mango trees in the lot next door.

So with all my Internet searching I find there are three basic avocado families; Mexican, Guatemalan and Antillean (West Indian). Antillean, which probably originated along the Pacific coast in Central America, yields well in lowland tropical situations and warm subtropical areas such as southern Florida. The Antillean also has smooth skin and is more pear shaped than round. The Mexican-Guatemalan hybrids originated around Atlixco in Puebla State where avocados have been traced back 7-8000 years. The Atlixco avocado was the one introduced into California as a 'Fuerte'.   Sounds to me like it's highlands vs. lowlands avocados.

Avocado tree

Our avocados

Many types of avocados

Gancho for mangoes and avocados

2 comments:

Andean said...

It would be interesting to have an avocado "tasting" of the many types. Yum!

sparks said...

I tasted two types in Florida, both smooth skin and wasn't impressed compared to Hass or Fuerte. Neighbors say these are good so we'll see in a few days

The construction of the house finished in April 2011 and I'm pretty much settled in. As of March 2014 I'm in preparation for rain mode for this coming summer. That includes sealing and painting things and dealing with drainage issues from last year.

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