Here are the freshest avocados you’ll ever see! Just picked from our trees! They were flowers just one year ago, and took all year to get to this size and maturity so we could harvest them for you! They are rock hard and won’t soften at all until they leave the tree.
I took this photo in March, before the trees were in full bloom. These are the buds that appear on the trees. Don’t they look a little bit like cauliflower? It’s amazing how these buds unfold and eventully become flowers on long spikey stems, and later turn into tiny avocados. In fact, it’s amazing how avocados grow! Today I’m sharing photos and a spectacular video that was filmed right here on our ranch!
When the trees are in full bloom, they look from a distance like they are covered with yellow froth. The new reddish leaves begin to grow so they can cover the new baby avocados that appear after pollination.
I never get tired of looking for the tiny baby avocados that begin to grow where the flowers used to be.
Dried flowers that have fallen from the trees are carpeting the ground, and a few of the baby avocados are there too. The trees usually set many more baby fruits than can actually grow throughout the season. Some will fall when they are tiny, and others fall when they get bigger. The avocados that remain on the tree and grow to maturity are survivors!
The tree just cannot sustain this many baby avocados. Some of them must fall off so the tree can support the fruit that will grow for the next year until it is ready to harvest.
My friend Kim Miller Kelly came out for a visit last week to photograph the baby avocados. This time of year is one of my favorites, with all the fruit trees blooming, including the pomegranates! Such fun to see the flowers become fruit right before your eyes!
One of the most exciting things to happen lately was a visit from Nicole and Mark Jolly, the creators of TRUE FOOD: How Does It Grow? They spent a whole day on the ranch, filming the trees, the flowers, the fruit and learned firsthand how to harvest avocados! I was just recovering from knee surgery, so I couldn’t do much hiking that day, but it was lots of fun to ride around in the back of the pickup truck!
You’re going to love the video that Nicole and Mark created about how avocados grow! Learn a little history, inside tips about ripening and serving avocados, and find out how to pick avocados yourself! Check it out right here!
