Avocados

We have a beautiful mature avocado tree on our property that we moved to 3 years ago. The first year, it produced tons of the most amazing, delicious avocados, unlike any that I have tasted anywhere else. Last year it produced some fruit but they never matured, and ended up falling off the tree with the wind. This year, nothing, not a single avocado. Anyone have any ideas what the cause of this could be? I'm on Crete and we are having increasingly extreme weather events here, so wondering if this could be the cause? My other thought is that the tree has 2 suckers that have turned into full on trees, but didn't produce fruit in that 1st year we were here. Could these 2 suckers be competing with or taking energy from the main tree? Should they be cut down?

Hey Dareios,
our avocado tree in Andalucia produces every year, although the years differ.

Ours never ripen on the tree. You pick them and then wait till they get ripe. Or did you mean they dropped off the tree before reaching "maturity"?

What I do know about avocado is that they need lots of water. Like tons of it. No problem where I am, we have all year running rivers that feed the irrigation. Did you water your tree? Did it rain enough?

Did the tree flower? Was it raining while it did? Or did you have a sand storm? We often have Kalima, desert sand, come in around that time of year (March). And if that gets on the flowers they wont be able to be pollinated.

I don't think the suckers should be a problem. Unless they are from under the graft line. Many avocado trees here get seriously cut back and benefit from the new growth.

Do you know what variety you have?
Can you post some photo of the tree (and best case the fruit also, cut in half)?

Hi Ben, thanks for your reply.

Yes, waht I meant is that they never got full size, they just shrivelled up and dropped off prematurely. During the summer we normally irrigate  our trees 2x a week, for about an hour. I feel like it should be getting enough water but the whole "how much to water fruit trees" topic is still so confusing to me.

We have had some serious issues with drought since being here, and we get African duststorms every spring, but there was one last May that was particularly nasty. I was actually away for a month this past spring so I really don't actually know what was happening with the tree, or whether it even flowered. I will take pics tmrw and share them here. I don't know what the variety is unfortunately. Thanks for your help!

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:Hey Dareios,
our avocado tree in Andalucia produces every year, although the years differ.

Ours never ripen on the tree. You pick them and then wait till they get ripe. Or did you mean they dropped off the tree before reaching "maturity"?

What I do know about avocado is that they need lots of water. Like tons of it. No problem where I am, we have all year running rivers that feed the irrigation. Did you water your tree? Did it rain enough?

Did the tree flower? Was it raining while it did? Or did you have a sand storm? We often have Kalima, desert sand, come in around that time of year (March). And if that gets on the flowers they wont be able to be pollinated.

I don't think the suckers should be a problem. Unless they are from under the graft line. Many avocado trees here get seriously cut back and benefit from the new growth.

Do you know what variety you have?
Can you post some photo of the tree (and best case the fruit also, cut in half)?

For now here's a pic of the fruit from 2 yrs ago. Sorry, it's not cut in half.

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:Hey Dareios,
our avocado tree in Andalucia produces every year, although the years differ.

Ours never ripen on the tree. You pick them and then wait till they get ripe. Or did you mean they dropped off the tree before reaching "maturity"?

What I do know about avocado is that they need lots of water. Like tons of it. No problem where I am, we have all year running rivers that feed the irrigation. Did you water your tree? Did it rain enough?

Did the tree flower? Was it raining while it did? Or did you have a sand storm? We often have Kalima, desert sand, come in around that time of year (March). And if that gets on the flowers they wont be able to be pollinated.

I don't think the suckers should be a problem. Unless they are from under the graft line. Many avocado trees here get seriously cut back and benefit from the new growth.

Do you know what variety you have?
Can you post some photo of the tree (and best case the fruit also, cut in half)?

Here is a picture of the tree and a close up of what's going on at the base with the 3 trunks...

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:Hey Dareios,
our avocado tree in Andalucia produces every year, although the years differ.

Ours never ripen on the tree. You pick them and then wait till they get ripe. Or did you mean they dropped off the tree before reaching "maturity"?

What I do know about avocado is that they need lots of water. Like tons of it. No problem where I am, we have all year running rivers that feed the irrigation. Did you water your tree? Did it rain enough?

Did the tree flower? Was it raining while it did? Or did you have a sand storm? We often have Kalima, desert sand, come in around that time of year (March). And if that gets on the flowers they wont be able to be pollinated.

I don't think the suckers should be a problem. Unless they are from under the graft line. Many avocado trees here get seriously cut back and benefit from the new growth.

Do you know what variety you have?
Can you post some photo of the tree (and best case the fruit also, cut in half)?

Dareios Alexandre wrote:We have had some serious issues with drought since being here, and we get African duststorms every spring, but there was one last May that was particularly nasty.

We had a bad windstorm this spring when my Red Plum was flowering. Every petal and all the pollen was blown right off and a tree that normally produces more fruit than I can cope with, barely produced a handful for fresh eating.

I can definitely imagine how a dust storm could be part of this problem. Lack of fertilization can definitely be part of the problem. We get much more "June drop" of baby apples if there wasn't good bee weather when the tree was blossoming.  I have also read somewhere that Avocado trees tend not to be good at setting fruit vs number of flowers to begin with.

Do you understand the concept of "mast years"? This is a tendency for trees to produce so-so for several years while building up the strength to over-produce for one season. This helps the tree by decreasing the risk of all their seeds being consumed by animals instead of there being such an abundance, that the animals bury and forget some of the fruit - thus creating more baby trees. This tendency has been discouraged in domestic trees, but I have still observed its influence.

This thread is huge and I haven't read it all, but it is specifically about European Avocado growing: https://permies.com/t/56348/Avocados-Frost-Europe-info-cold

This thread is much shorter but not in your ecosystem.  The OP (Winn) has access to very knowledgeable people and seems very helpful: https://permies.com/t/233789/Dreaming-Cascadian-avocados

Good luck!