Avocado
Persea americana
Wants every scrap of light you can find it, and has roots that resent sitting wet far more than sitting dry.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Green
- Sunlight
- As much light as you can give it, supplemented through winter.
- Watering
- Water regularly, but let the top of the soil dry between times.
- Feeding
- A balanced feed every 6-8 weeks through the season.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- February
- Pruning
- Pinch the growing tips while it is young; do any real pruning in spring.
- Overwintering
- Bring it in before the first frost and hold it above 10°C.
- Feb–Mar Bud Break
- Mar–Apr Flowering
- Apr–Oct Fruit Set
- Oct–Nov Harvest
- Nov–Dec Growing
- Jan–Feb Growing
- Plant spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- In-row spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- Between rows
- 23 ft
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A fine surface mat, and nothing below it
- Working depth
- 6–24 in
- Spread
- 16–25 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 16 in of soil
Hair-fine roots in a shallow felt, with no deep anchor to fall back on. It cannot chase water, so it is the first casualty of a drought and the first thing killed by a hoe. Mulch it, never cultivate around it, and never let it go dry in its first two summers.
Avocado roots have almost no root hairs, so they take up water inefficiently and only from a shallow layer near the surface. That combination is behind nearly every dead avocado: they want frequent light watering and ground that never stays wet, and root rot follows the moment it does.
Figures recorded for Avocado itself. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Spider mites
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Spider mites
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Spider mites
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Spider mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Spider mites
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
Comfrey, Nasturtiums, Lavender
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com