I am giving this fruit tree ONE LAST CHANCE! Despite 8 years of love and attention, my avocado tree has refused to ripen fruit. I am pulling out all the stops and using every gardening trick I’ve learned to force a fruit tree to fruit. If your fruit tree won’t fruit, these gardening tips are gold! I’m forcing this stupid tree to fruit, so sit back and enjoy.
How To Prune Avocado Trees: https://youtu.be/jdFgP6VEOts?si=-_1pHNmw2S571BY5
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Forcing Fruit Tree To Fruit
1:41 Growing Cold Hardy Avocado Trees
3:47 My Fruit Tree Isn’t Fruiting
5:29 Measure #1: Pruning Modification
7:23 Measure #2: Restricting Fertilizer
8:57 Measure #3: Excessive Mulching
10:45 Final Fruit Tree Growing Tips
13:47 Adventures With Dale
If you have any questions about how to force fruit trees to fruit, want to learn more about growing fruit trees or the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!
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#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #fruittrees #fruittree
Do you have a fruit tree in your yard that will not fruit? Well, I do, and I have had enough. This fruit tree has been disappointing me for eight years now, and this year, I’m pulling out all the stops. This is my last attempt to get this stupid fruit tree to fruit. Make sure you stay until the end of this video because I’m going to teach you every way I have learned over the years to force a stubborn tree to fruit. If you’re new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. But before I begin, I want to apologize for my voice on this video. I moved to North Carolina 8 years ago, and since then, I have never been sick, not even once. But I finally took a vacation with my family and I had a 10-hour flight and I had a sick person in front of me, behind me, and to my right. And they coughed on me for the entire 10 hours straight. And I guess with the jet lag, I couldn’t take it anymore. And my body finally gave in. And I’ve been sick for the past week. But there is no place better to be, I found, uh, than outside in the garden in the golden sunlight on a gentle cool day like this to try and keep that illness at bay. So, I’m I’m in the recovery process. I’m feeling better. So, please bear with my voice throughout this video. When I moved to North Carolina in 2017, the thought of growing an avocado tree in ground in this state was unheard of. The experts said you couldn’t do it. Well, experts? Oh, you mean people to prove wrong? Well, I refused to give into the naysayers. Where there is a will, there is a way. So, I started researching and this is what I found. There are three races of avocado trees. Mexican, Guatemalan, and West Indian. And yes, race is the taxonomically correct term. West Indian avocados are from the tropical lowlands of the Americas and are very coldsensitive. Guatemalan avocados are from the Central American highlands and they are somewhat frost hearty because of their higher elevation. They have a higher tolerance to cold. Mexican avocados are from the highlands of Mexico and they are therefore the most cold hearty with pure Mexican avocados tolerating hard frosts and freezes. It became evident to me that here in zone 8, North Carolina, my only chance of growing an avocado tree for long-term survival in ground would be to grow a pure Mexican race avocado variety. But there was another problem. Most avocado trees are vigorous, growing 30 ft or more. I knew I would need to protect this tree anytime winter temps would drop below 28°. So, I needed a variety that was naturally dwarfing. What I learned was the most cold hearty known pure Mexican avocado with a somewhat dwarfing growth habit was the variety Leela. So that is what I purchased and I planted it in my yard in 2018 and it has been growing and thriving for over 7 years almost eight and it’s doing beautifully. I did it. I proved the naysayers wrong and I became the first person to ever grow an avocado tree successfully long-term in ground in North Carolina. At least to my knowledge. But here’s the problem. Back in 2017 when I did my research, the internet wasn’t what it is today. Broadband was finally becoming a widespread thing. YouTube was in its very early stages and was mostly just a repository of short clips. And there just wasn’t that much information out there on cold hearty avocado varieties because they aren’t cultivated commercially. While I knew that Leela was cold hearty, there was no information available on its fruit quality, how well it produced or held its crop. And this has been my nightmare. My Leela avocado tree has flowered and produced fruit all 7 years that it has been in ground. But the first 5 years from 2018 to 2022, it dropped 100% of its crop. Year 6 in September of 2023, I finally got my first avocado, which I taste tested on camera and loved. Last year, 2024, I got six mature avocados. I thought, finally, this tree has gotten over its jitters and it is becoming a reliable fruit bearer. So, I expected that this year, 2025, I would have the biggest crop ever. But guess what happened? I got none. Zero. The tree set hundreds of fruits like it always does, but it dropped every single fruit. I should be getting bushels of avocados by now, but I’m getting none. There is a lot more information on the internet today about cold hearty avocados, including Leela. And what most gardeners have found by now is that while Leela is very cold tolerant for an avocado and it does produce good fruit quality, it is known to be a poor producer. Knowing what I know now, I would have not have chosen Leela to grow and I would have gone with a more precocious variety that is also dwarfing and Mexican race like Stewart, which is what you see right here. Now, this Stewart avocado tree is not quite as cold hearty as a Leela, but it’s known to be a much better producer, and that is why I planted this Stewart tree in my rear property last year, and so far, it’s doing pretty well. So, I’m giving my Leela avocado tree one more chance. I’m taking everything I’ve learned about gardening over the last decade to try and force this tree to fruit and hold its crop. And this is how I’m going to do it. Measure number one, I am modifying my pruning schedule. And here is why. The first 3 years I had my tree, I didn’t need to prune the tree all that much because it was so small. The tree tended to flower in January and February, and it would set its fruit over February and March. But since then, the tree has grown, and I’ve needed to hard prune it in order to keep it small so I could protect it in the winter. And I’ve been consistently pruning it in late August and early September to accomplish this. Now, my thought has been that pruning it at this time would give it the most amount of time to produce new budwood and recover so it could produce flowers and fruit again for the new season. And it has worked. But the problem is this tree has been so vigorous that the new budwood has been consistently flowering starting in November with its first fruit starting to set in December, nearly 2 months ahead of its original schedule before I started aggressively pruning it. So, my new hypothesis is that pruning it in late summer triggers new budwood too early for my climate because it’s too cold here in North Carolina for the tree to survive unprotected. If it flowers in November and it sets fruit in December and January, that fruit is more likely to drop since it had to endure prolonged cold stress. So, this year, I waited two extra months and pruned the entire tree the last week of October. My hope is that this will delay flowering into February and March. So, the fruit starts setting when temperatures have moderated and the hard freezes are gone, making the fruit less likely to drop from cold stress. Now, this is a gamble because I gave it the most severe pruning it has ever had to control its size better. And I’m afraid I may have waited too long and I won’t get the new budwood in time since things have cooled down so much. I guess we’ll find out together. Measure number two that I’m taking is this tree for the first time ever will be getting no fertilizer or compost. Because I prune my tree so aggressively each year in order to keep it small, my logic has been that it would need ample fertilizer and compost to help it recover and grow new budwood quickly in time to flower again over the winter and early spring. But I now think this has actually backfired on me. I prune the daylights out of this tree every single year. And no matter how hard I prune the thing, it is towering over my house by the midsummer, just like this meerle lemon tree right here, which I prune just as aggressively, if not more aggressively. So, my working hypothesis is that the fertilizer and the compost has made the soil too fertile, and the abundance of nitrogen is causing the tree to grow with excessive vigor. Because holding and ripening fruits takes so much energy out of the tree, the tree’s obsession with vigor. It’s its focus on that vigor and growth. Well, it makes it more likely to drop its fruits in an effort to put more energy into that leafy green growth. So, this year, I’m going to restrict the nitrogen to control the vigor. It’s not going to get any fertilizer or compost at all. All it is going to get is the chop and drop prunings from the tree itself. The hope is that this will reduce soil fertility and put the brakes on its vigor. And if the tree is less obsessed with growing top growth, it will therefore be more likely to hold its fruit. And measure number three is excessive mulching. One thing that avocado trees need to be healthy is a thick mat of mulch around the base of the tree. That’s because avocado trees are very shallow rooted softwood trees that send huge amounts of feeder roots along the surface. If you don’t create a rich layer of organic matter around the base of that tree that holds moisture and protects those surface roots from sunlight, those feeder roots will struggle to establish and the tree won’t thrive. I knew this since day one and I have always done so and this year will be no different. So, I’m going to take the massive pile of branches that I pruned from the tree, chop them into smaller pieces, and drop them all along the surface of the tree and an extremely thick mound. This matter will slowly decay over time and turn into the fertilizer that will feed the tree. But because we’re dealing with raw organic matter here, it will take a long time to break down and feed the tree, unlike fertilizers that have been processed and are designed to break down more quickly. So instead of the tree getting rapid growth from an abundance of nutrients, the hope is that it will get slower, more controlled growth that will keep the tree happy and healthy while discouraging too much vigor and reducing fruit drop. And this is the final result of the mulching process. And if you’re new to mulching avocado trees, you may be thinking to yourself, “Wow, that is an absolute ton of mulch.” But I’m telling you, this is what it really takes to have a truly healthy avocado tree. The secret to success in terms of a healthy tree is to have a super thick mat of organic matter like this. But because I cut down my tree so aggressively, I had an overabundance in pruning. So this is only a small fraction of the prunings that I came up with. So because those prunings are worth their weight in gold, I trucked them to the back of my yard and I used them to mulch my citrus and avocado trees in the rear. So I heavily mulched my Stewart avocado tree right here. And then I pruned and I mulched all of my citrus trees. This is the caracara red navl orange that looks great. Then I have my Maywa kumquat that is in the middle. That is well mulched and looking great. Next to that I have my brown select satsuma which is pruned and mulched. Right next to that is my marorrow blood orange which looks beautiful. And then I have my Eustace lime quat right there. So everything you see in the backyard right here is mulched, pruned, and ready to endure the cold of the winter. Just beautiful. But that’s not all. I also pruned and I mulched my big Oari Satsuma orange tree right here and my meerle lemon tree, which was in desperate need of a haircut. I pruned that and I mulched it. Turns out that pruning is the perfect thing to do when you’re sick. It’s nice low activity to get a little bit of sunshine without doing any heavy lifting, significant bending. If you’re in recovery from an illness, pruning your trees is a very relaxing thing to do. And that right there is my three-step plan to get this stubborn avocado tree to finally produce a good harvest and hold the fruits to maturity. It’s risky for sure. Maybe I waited too long to prune it and I should have delayed one month instead of two. Maybe total fertilizer restriction is too extreme and maybe I should still give it bone meal and azamite so it gets calcium and phosphorus but without any significant nitrogen. I’m not 100% sure. But I do know this. I am tired of half measures. I am pulling out all of the stops this year like a total elimination diet. This is my tree’s last chance because that spot right there, well, it’s the best real estate in my entire yard for a fruit tree, and I’m tired of dedicating this prime space to a stinker. So, please be sure to follow along with me for updates along the way because I am very interested to see how all this turns out. So, everybody, I sure hope you enjoyed this video and found it helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you are notified when I release more videos like these. If you’re looking for detailed pruning guides on how to prune an avocado or citrus trees, I’ve made those videos in detail in the past. And I will place direct links to those videos down in the video description for your convenience if you want the finer details for all of my favorite products that I use for pruning and growing fruit trees. I’ll also place direct links to all of those items in the video description as well for everything I use in real life in my yard and garden. All those products are linked in my Amazon storefront. So, expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, you’ll see everything I use in my yard and garden in real life. And also check out my new website, the millennialger.com, if you want to buy custom merch to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Da just got his first treat from the ice cream man. The ice cream man came down the street. You can still hear it. Yeah. And all they had left, they didn’t have any pup cups, so they they had a chocolate bar. We’re going to have to desandage cookie the chocolate bar to give Dale the safe vanilla. Yeah. And the amazing thing is Dale knew what the ice cream man was. He heard the truck and he about lost his mind. He was barking and alerting. Hold on. Okay, Mr. Handsome, tell us how you think it is. Are you even tasting it, buddy? Don’t forget to clean your plate. Clean plate club, Dale.
40 Comments
Do you have a stubborn fruit tree in your yard? Let us know in the comments below! TIMESTAMPS here:
0:00 Forcing Fruit Tree To Fruit
1:41 Growing Cold Hardy Avocado Trees
3:47 My Fruit Tree Isn't Fruiting
5:29 Measure #1: Pruning Modification
7:23 Measure #2: Restricting Fertilizer
8:57 Measure #3: Excessive Mulching
10:45 Final Fruit Tree Growing Tips
13:47 Adventures With Dale
Oh man. I have a Holiday dwarf Avacado. It’s now 7years and always problematic. It’s never shown a hint of producing. I don’t like its weeping habit and the rodents seem to love chewing on the bark. It’s been too finicky and I was going to take it out. Last Saturday I noticed a few bud clusters. I guess I’m keeping it a little longer.
1.5K likes with 19K views? Is it really that hard for people to click like?! I don't get it!
I have a pomegranate that hasn't fruited since I put it in the ground 7 years ago.
I think you are on the right track. If you really feel the need to fertilize, I personally would scatter a few handfuls of compost rather than using other fertilizer. I think with the mulching you do, your soil is probably pretty rich already. Just a thought. Can avacados be grafted? Maybe you could graft from each tree with your Stuart. For example: add a couple branches of Lila to Stuart and a couple from Stuart to Lila. Could be that one location is better on certain years and the other location is better other years. May also benefit from cross pollination if they flower at the same time like other fruits. I live where it’s cold, no experience with avocado but I have some with other fruits.
I have a simular issue with my blueberry bushes. No matter what I do, they won't fruit. Would that same methods in the video work for blueberries too? I'm in zone 4.
My biggest concern is your cutting back 2/3 of the tree Foliage every year I'm surprised its still alive from this nutrient deficiency and weakening of the tree the new growth is key for its survival is competing with the flowering and fruiting Evsry year the tree needs to have foliage first for Fruit fruiting is always se condary its a bad dilemma having to either chop it or let it die of freeze
Try top-working with Gwen. It sets and hold so many fruit it breaks branches. Often referred to as a dwarf. Don’t know about cold tolerance though, you would need to research that. A seedling of Hass I believe.
as an Australian who has avocados. … you need to check the soil PH ..especially as the tree is against your house wall and the mortar between the bricks will leach Lime .. avocados hate this and it can cause fruit drop …. also I would try a trace element soil conditioner and maybe add some basic acidic fertilizer … or even just old coffee grounds to the soil …. Good luck I hope get some fruit of it …. I use my mower to dispense with the excess fruit I get that I cant give away …. lol
Maybe, the avocado tree will not fruit untill you let it grow to its natural size.
I have some apple trees, old varieties, where I had to wait 12 years to have a harvest. I pruned them regularly, one less, but the started together.
Top work the tree
How was Dale while you were away?
After having these trees planted near your home for years; how far away from the foundation do you recommend planting a new avocado and lemon tree?
I learned a few years ago that too much compost on fruit trees can cause fruits to drop. I had a plum tree that was liaded with fruit and i put down a bunch of compost as a mulch too. It caused all the fruits to drop.
when my dad was alive and living in Stockton Ca. he would thump the trunk with a mallet. I would use a rubber mallet, and would start the thumping when the bloom starts.
It’s Mexican, you need to threaten and insult it in Spanish with a chancla 🩴 in your han. Some ideas “bueno para nada! Si no me das fruta te voy a mochar!!” Or “Aaah pero que bonito te vez tragándote todo el abono y ni fruta das!!! Vas a ver cabron, si no te pones las pilas te vas a la chingada” then smack it a few times with the chancla
Yep
Swap the avocado tree for a white sapote tree. It’s just as cold resistant as citrus and it’s related to citrus
Now I need to threat my orange for no fruit for 8 years?
I bought this avocado because of you 😅😂
Use potato skins, banana peals, coffee grounds, brown sugar, yeast. Ferment that for 3 days and then mix 1 cup of that fermentation in 2 gals of water it. It will flawer like crazy and fruit like crazy trust me.
Feel better soon!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for such AMAZING Content! You are my favorite internet garden guru!
You must not have kids, they get me sick all the time. Also, 8 years without being sick? Are there people that didn’t get COVID?
Just graft the lila tree with stewart…
"I gave it the most severe pruning it has ever had" – bad decision! The more you prune in one go, the more vegetative growth most fruit trees will show. And too much vegetative growth is often counterproductive to generative growth aka fruiting… When I have to give a fruit tree such a severe pruning, I expect the following year to be basically lost for fruit production.
"…for the first time, will be getting no fertilizer or compost" – well, looking at the amount of mulch you put under the tree, I would not call that "no compost". All this mulch will eventually turn into compost…
You prune the trees hard to keep them small, but you fertilize the hell out of them to make them regenerate? Well, they re-generated everything you cut away and some more…
You drive your racing car into a sand bed to loose excessive speed but at the same time you kick the gas pedal to the bottom to regain speed?
OF COURSE your trees show crazy growth every year! If someone wants to produce as much green growth as possible, he has just to do what you do every year: heavy pruning and heavy fertilizing. But that's definitely the opposite of what you want to do in order to get a stubborn tree to fruit…
I plead for you to cut the tree some slack next year. It might bring a decent harvest the year after, if you can keep restraining yourself another year from fertilizing and heavy fall-pruning.
If you want to keep the tree smaller, you should prune several times per year. That's what my grandfather did. Summer-pruning to prevent the trees from growing too big. Fall or winter pruning to select the best twigs for fruit production the following year.
I think the reason your avocado tree isn't growing fruit is because you are pruning it each year. I've heard avocado trees prioritize growth and once they feel grown they start to focus on fruit production. This makes sense to me because they come from tropical climates where there is an abundance of food, water, and sun. The battle for these tropical plants is the race to the sun and competition from other plants. So they will drop fruit if they don't feel they are big enough to win the race.
Loving your reasoning and details mate! Hope ya better already.💪🏽🌴
Check for boron deficiency
It's called fruit abortion if boron is not available to plant
Check pH of soil too
SOLUTION: Make contact with tree growers in MOUNT TAMBORINE. QLD. AU. They know EVERYTHING there is to know. Type in: Avocado growers. North Tamborine. QLD. AU.
Try girdling
You need an A type and a B type cado for maximum fruit. Yes it is somewhat self fertile but having the two types provides pollination for abundant fruit.
I usually wait 3 years and if I don't see the harvest from a grafted tree then it's out of the garden. You can take scions from your Stewart avocado and graft on top of your Lila OR since you have sandy soil you can rip your Lila out altogether and replace it with a mango tree. Consider growing a mango tree a challenge. You are already an engineering master of cold protection.
Who is giving it bone meal in the nature?!?!?! 🤦♂️
Bro … love your channel . I can only dream to make videos as good as yours.
I live in Houston and I'm trying the variety Fantastic. The most cold hardy I found in my research . would you give it a try ?
A more effective solution in my opinion would be to use wood ash (you could burn all of those cuttings from the tree) and then spread the wood ash around your trees. Get something like a solo stove bonfire in your backyard and use the spent ashes after a bonfire to spread your wood ashes around. It’s worked wonders for my lime tree.
Why not graft other varieties onto it. Avocados trees have both male and female flowers. Unfortunately they are not open at the same time, while avacados are self pollination is possible, planting or grafting an A type and a B type flowering avocado together is the only way to get a consistent crop.
Do you think the fruit would do any better if you added a type B avocado to the mix? I think Lila and Stewart are both type A. Would you get more or better fruit set with type B pollen being available?
Maybe you need to cap it like is done in ecuador
What is wrong with you. No I don’t want to support your channel. Weirdo