Dreaming of Cascadian avocados

Jay Angler wrote:Have you ever tried adding biochar to your soil mix? If so, did you notice any benefit? I posted more as a possible  approach to improve our success rate, but gardening rarely offers guarantees. There's lots of garden advice out there that hasn't got a hope in my ecosystem!

I have not, but my soil generally seems pretty good for most things, other than being slightly acid and slightly low in nitrogen. I haven't had any need to modify other than bit of lime for some things (not avocados), and occasional fish emulsion + generous mulching with wood chips for everything.

An acquaintance of mine heard about my desire to try to grow avocados, and offered to plant a bunch of seeds as her family consumed them. The few I tried, had gotten too dry to germinate due to life, but Sheri clearly was on the right wavelength and had over 15 of them germinate.

So one far afternoon, we spent a very busy hour transplanting her sprouts from a raised bed into my stash of #10 pots. I was amazed how long of a tap root the seeds had sent down.

I had prepared the top of one of my raised compost bins buy lining it with chicken wire in the hopes that would discourage rats (we've got a plethora of them unfortunately). I heaped up fresher compost on the east and west sides and added some layers of cardboard on the north side and filled every space inside the wire with the pots.

The winter began as last year with plenty of warmer than usual weather, with inconsistent rain. The plants did not go dormant, but hung onto their few leaves. Then mid-January arrived and we had 2 weeks of night time lows of -1C to -3C. However, it was sunny during the day with highs of +4 to +7C. Before that hit, I had stretched a clear plastic bag over the top of the chicken wire and the plants seemed to be happy. Then February came, the sun disappeared and it snowed. Now the lows were still mostly -3C, but the daytime highs were still below or near 0C. I left most of the snow on top of the chicken wire as insulation, but the poor babies aren't looking very happy.

I reviewed the temps on page 1. Considering these are just babies, I'm not sure my crossed fingers will do any good, particularly since more cold is coming. I added more compost to the two sides hoping that the microbial activity there will create just enough warmth to get at least some of the plants through?

Winn, do you think they have any hope at these temps? -3C is about 26F  I think you were only exposing plants to colder temps after they were older. Then again, sometimes tough love has its benefits! Lets hope so!

So everyone reading this, please cross your fingers too?