Avocado Tree Flowering for 2021 season
Flowering is always a nervous time for us at Avowest. We only get one crop a year and it is completely dependent on a few weeks in October.
For a good fruit set avocado trees need a run of warm nights and mild, sunny days.
Our Carabooda farms can usually manage this and our last crop failure was back in 2011. Heading inland to our Gingin farm can make it a bit harder to achieve the required night time temperatures. Mother nature was very cooperative this year though and conditions for pollination at both sites were good.
The other important factor for pollinating avocados is for something to do the pollinating.
At Avowest we bring bees in to pollinate our trees and have a great relationship with a beekeeper that extends back over 20 years. There are always other insects that can pollinate including native bees, flies and hoverflies. At both Gingin and Carabooda this year there were huge numbers of hoverflies present.
At Carabooda there were plenty of bees working the flowers too, but at Gingin they abandoned the avocados and headed for the arum lily flowers in Lennard Brook. Maybe the hoverflies beat the bees to the nectar?
It all seems to have worked out well though and we have a good fruit set for our 2021 season.
