Hello over here

gdgross

gdgross

New member
Hardiness zone
10b
Hi guys, Geoff (gdgross) from the other place joining over here too. (thanks @Tetters for the heads up)

Current green excitement/concern is about my fig grafts and baby avocado tree:

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Avocado looking slightly yellow with some brown on the leaf edges developing. Added a bit of organic fertilizer at Tetters suggestion yesterday, hopefully, it'll be ok. Possibly still in shock from the move, it's been planted here in the ground for about 2 months or so.

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Fig grafts seem to be taking off though! Three out of the five I tried seem to have taken. These cleft grafts shown in the raw pics seem to be more successful than the other ones I tried. I forget the name, but it's the one where you basically match the scion/rootstock size, so it looks like a continuous cylinder when you're done.

Happy Sunday!
Geoff
 
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Well fancy seeing you here young man😯 what a surprise :giggle: welcome!
At the nursery where I worked for years, I must have taken tens of thousands of cuttings, but never learned about grafting. The boss bought all the grafted stuff in from elsewhere.
Meadowlark said:
Those fig grafts look super! They are going to make some nice trees. What type of fig?

The avocado looks to me like possibly fertilizer burn causing the brown edges. They are very vulnerable to fertilizer when transplanted in hot weather in my experience, but @Tetters disagrees with me on that.

Welcome aboard Garden Chat.
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I was about to say that I have never ever grown an avocado before either. Now I can add that I have never gardened in your kind of temperatures either, so actually I am very ill-advised to speak on either or any subject here.

At this point, my very best advice to you Geoff is to listen carefully to my knowledgeable American friend who most definitely knows what he's doing.......and I will get back to my flowers. 😉
Our climate is quite different in the UK..... I did wonder though Meadowlark, as this has been in the ground already for a couple of months, if that was long enough to start feeding it.
 
Thanks guys. I’ve been conservative with the fertilizer - one small application of about half of what I’d normally do, using the liquid soluble Romeo fert. I did do a light application yesterday of organic chicken manure, but it’s so fresh I could probably get rid if most of it if I needed to.

The weather’s been the usual California costal spring - cool most days, maybe afternoon sun, typically 70s for most of the day. Doesn’t usually get hot here till after June. :)
 
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Meadowlark said:
Those fig grafts look super! They are going to make some nice trees. What type of fig?

The avocado looks to me like possibly fertilizer burn causing the brown edges. They are very vulnerable to fertilizer when transplanted in hot weather in my experience, but @Tetters disagrees with me on that.

Welcome aboard Garden Chat.
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TBH, I'm not 100% what kind of figs - I got the scions from a local friend, she thought maybe turkey figs, maybe there's golden one in there too. I'll be ok with anything other than the tiger figs I have on those branches now.

There are already two branches of missions grafted on from 2 years ago; they're doing well. The rootstock is tiger, which taste great, but they split so fast that the tree becomes a festering pulpy buggy mess by august, so I opted to rework the whole thing, or most of it, lol.
 
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Welcome aboard @gdgross! My youngest is in the process of trying to start his own avocado tree too. He's using a seed from an avocado we bought in the grocery store. He's a lot more optimistic about it working than I am. :LOL:
 
Mike said:
Welcome aboard @gdgross! My youngest is in the process of trying to start his own avocado tree too. He's using a seed from an avocado we bought in the grocery store. He's a lot more optimistic about it working than I am. :LOL:
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When mine grows I'll mail you a pit, lol.

This little tree is a graft of an F0 generation scion grafted onto an F1 generation seed/rootstock, both from my parents huge, well producing, delicious, 100+ year old fuerte avocado tree. i hope mine becomes half the tree theirs is!
 
Tetters said:
@gdgross Did we talk about testing your soil? I believe it's very important that your avocado tree should be in an acid garden. They don't like lime, and need watering with rainwater. :unsure:
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Excellent, excellent post above. Sorry I didn't ask about it sooner. Avocado trees thrive in slightly acidic soil...6.0 to 6.5. They are sensitive to alkaline soils and amendments.
 
gdgross said:
Thanks I’ll have to figure out how to give my soil a test. Never done this!
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You can get a cheap soil testing kit online, or any local garden shop/ nursery. You can also look at plants that grow in your close vicinity. Check out if other acid loving plants look good nearby - or not!
Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Camelias, Heather, and Magnolias are all acid loving. If there are any Hydrangeas, are they pink or blue? Acid soil turns them blue, but in chalky, limey soil they'll be pink.
An example of how important this is:-
Our little village is very chalky. One of the neighbours decided to grow Rhododendrons, so I asked if he realised that they wouldn't survive where he was planting them. He argued, and said he would be planting in a deep hole with lots of peat. I wished him luck and left it.
Now, a few years later those plants are dead and gone. Sadly I watched them yellow and shrivel up.....without a hint of ''I told you so'' 😈
 
Well I gave my soil a test near the avocado tree, and it looks pretty neutral: IMG_5227.webp
Suppose I’ll be wanting to get some ammendments to make it slightly more acidic?
 
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