Summer Heat & Pruning
February 2020
Looking forward to wrapping the summer up. I suspected it was going to be bad when we were topping 40oC in the middle of November. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wrong and it’s been the hottest summer we have had for a while. The fruit is hanging in there though. Fruitset on our new Carabooda orchard was a casualty of the early hot weather. The young trees set a decent crop but are very exposed to north easterly winds and had dropped most of their avocados by Christmas. Our Gingin farm has a reasonable crop at this stage. Trees there are medium age (4-8 years) and are large enough to give each another some shelter from drying winds. The old trees (20 – 40 years) on Avowest’s original orchard in Carabooda have a mostly heavy crop. I keep threatening to pull them out but they just keep producing.
Pruning and mulching is still underway at Carabooda. I’ve finally got a grapple attachment on my excavator working properly. Sadly because I’m still pruning in February I’m cutting a lot of fruit off. I guess an optimist would look at what is still left on the trees.
