Avocados and Frost in Europe (plus info on the cold-hardiest avocados and how to grow them)

Ida Oyad wrote:Hi everyone!
I'm here in Paris. I ate an avocado fruit and I found it so tasty and creamy so I decided to plant the seed. Success, has a lot of leaves now. My only concern is, can I not disturb or hurt the roots as I just planted it in a small pot. And I want to transplant it in the garden.

Hi Ida, welcome to this avocado thread and well done for having the idea of growing an avocado tree!
In the long-term, your young avocado tree will do better planted in the ground outdoors, but make sure it is protected from winter cold and excess winter rainfall. The ground where it's planted needs to have good drainage. Avocados don't like being in pots for very long.  I germinate my avocado seedlings in a 1.7 L pot, and never wait longer than 12 months to plant them outdoors - they get pot bound very quickly.  If you do wait longer than a year,  this will significantly slow down their growth / development, due to an unhealthy [restricted] root system,  leading to browning of the leaves and premature leaf-drop.

Six new entries with photos for the 9-year-old 'Hass' tree: https://imgur.com/a/5gflnlU
I'm a bit late with updating the imgur blogs for all the avo 'varieties' (an orchard of 8 trees in southeast England), due to being a bit 'overstretched' this year, but I will get around to completing this by year-end.  At least I've now made a start ....

All my ongoing blogs, for an outdoor avocado orchard (8 trees) have now been updated, up until the 5 Nov 2026 - on this date the trees were aged between three- and nine-years-old. The site is not ideal for growing avocado trees, as it is on an exposed N-facing slope. It is located at 58 metres above sea-level and 1.8 Km inland from the seafront in St Leonards-on-Sea, UK (50.86°N).  

Please note that none of these trees are grafted - all were raised from seed taken from the parent trees of the variety indicated, i.e. they are not genetic clones of the parent, but may be of mixed parentage, i.e. arising from hybridization between different avocado varieties where the seed originated from. To date, flower-bud formation or flower-bud opening have only been observed in the Hass (at the 6 year old stage in 2023) and Del Rio (at the 3 year 7 month old stage in 2026), but neither tree has shown any fruit-set. The blogs are as follows and contain a photograph and description for each entry:

Hass (Guatemalan x Mexican hybrid) - 9 years old
45 entries: https://imgur.com/a/5gflnlU

Fuerte (Mexican) - 5 years 10 months old
30 entries: https://imgur.com/a/0XuODou

Bacon (Guatemalan x Mexican hybrid) - 4 years 11 months old
54 entries: https://imgur.com/a/FmRvs7d

Del Rio (Mexican) - 4 years 3 months old
36 entries: https://imgur.com/a/dAbixIe

Daughter, Joey & Wilma (Mexican) - 3 years old
35 entries: https://imgur.com/a/FuxWI29