Will the second avocado plant make it?

It's been almost a year since the last time I wrote about the avocado trees. They are growing well, but no serious updates about their growth.

As usual, they are getting bigger but at a slow pace. The oldest avocado has rebounded and is very healthy. The middle avocado plant is very ill. It doesn't seem to be taking this cold weather very well, and its leaves have dried up considerably. The third avocado is doing fine, though I am concerned about leaving the small offshoot at its base. I may cut it soon to let the nutrients go to the main plant.

Here are the latest pictures from this afternoon.


This is the oldest avocado. As you can see, it has grown in height significantly and its leaf production is very good.


This is the second avocado. The leaves are all droopy and some are dried out. Most worrisome of all is the lack of new leaf production in the crown.


The third avocado is doing great. You can see the offshoot trunk at the bottom of the plant. For the sake of the whole tree, I am thinking of removing this offshoot.

The plants have a thick layer of insulating soil on top and are well guarded from direct rain and snow. However, since they are outside, the cold is still affecting them. We'll have to see how the second plant does this season. If it makes it, I may prune it way back and try to get it to restart at a smaller height.

Golden Week 2009

Golden Week started last Wednesday for many people who took Thursday and Friday off. For those lucky people, their holiday lasts 8 full days. A few companies, in order to cut costs, have asked contractors to take Thursday and Friday off next week as well for a total for 11 days of straight vacation.

It would normally be a good time to travel.

But with highway tolls lowered to 1000 yen for unlimited mileage, everyone is out on the roads trying to make the most of this week of vacation. Not wanting to spend hours upon hours stuck in traffic, we are limiting our travels to the immediate vicinity. We may take a short drive to Kawasaki to eat tonight.

The weather has been warm and sunny. We had some heavy rain a week or so ago, and that brought some life back to the plants. Unfortunately for us humans, the nice weather will go sour on Monday. [Update: It went bad on Monday evening and hasn't let up since (it's Thursday now)]

As for the avocados, things are looking very good. The older plant is developing a very strong set of new leaves. You can see the growth at the top of the plant. There was a second branch, but the plant seems to have decided on the larger one to continue growing. I may need to provide a little correction to make sure it continues growing straight, though.


The younger avocado had been looking very anemic in the past few months. Then we had some very strong winds and all the weak leaves fell off. What seems to have happened afterwards is that the plant has resumed growing upwards with a new set of healthy leaves and stopped trying to put so much energy into the sick leaves. Hopefully this is a good sign and the plant will be healthy from now on.

Mold in the fruit?

Tonight I prepared a simple fried avocado dish. Essentially, I just sauteed slices of avocado in light oil and serve with lemon juice. Normally, this is a very easy and delicious way to consume avocados.

But the fruit I used tonight was a little older than usual. Certainly it was softer and the black spots of oxidization were very prevalent throughout the flesh. What was most worrisome was a large white area which seemed to begin at the stem and grow toward the seed area. I'd estimate it was approximately 1cm in length and about half a centimeter in width. It was shaped like a football and was hollow in the center.

I cut this area out and prepared the avocado as normal, but the flavor was bitter and I ended up tossing the dish.

Unfortunately I did not take pictures of this. What was it? Was it mold? How susceptible to mold are avocado fruits? How safe is this mold?

Mid-spring update

The two avocado plants made it through their first winter and have responded to the warm spring weather with a new growth of leaves. Unfortunately, due to high winds, the first set of new leaves were battered and are now deformed and drying out. This kind of puts a damper on my enthusiasm in today's post, but a new set of leaves seems to be peeking out amid the tatters.

The older avocado suffered the most damage to the new leaves. It seems to have survived the winter in relatively good health and the old leaves are very green and strong.

You can also make out a bit of branching at the top where it seems that the tree wants to grow in at least two directions. I'm considering pinching at this point to encourage the plant to grow straight a little more and also to encourage leaf growth. Depending on which branch seems more healthy, I will decide in a couple weeks.



The younger avocado seems to have suffered from severe anemia this winter. The leaves are yellow and brown around the edges. There hasn't been much growth this winter, as expected, but the lack of vigor is very worrying.

A new set of leaves has sprouted at the top of the plant and these leaves seem to be healthy so far. If this spring can induce some vigorous new growth, the old baby leaves can be shed safely.



Two more avocado seeds have been prepared. One is already in the soil and a stem is slowly becoming visible. The other is still in toothpicks and has only recently revealed its root.

Actually, four more seeds have also become available due to a guacamole party today. What I've noticed is that the newest seeds are about half the size of the seeds from a year ago. The avocados themselves are a bit smaller too, but the change in seed size is very interesting.

Two more seeds getting started

For some reason we had the chance to eat two avocados last month, so I've got another two seeds germinating.

The weather here in Tokyo has been pretty cool lately, but very dry. We've got most of the plants situated indoors, but some of the hardier plants like strawberries are still out in the cold. It should rain this week, which should help out with humidity, but more than that, it should begin getting warmer as we head towards spring.

Once spring rolls around, the avocados will go back outside for some direct sun and exposure to better air. Being cooped up all winter must be pretty hard for these plants.

Avocado: 9 months along

As the weather grew a bit cooler in the last couple months, the avocados themselves have slowed their growth to match. They are getting bigger, but they are not growing like they were during the warm summer months.

One of the big changes is the formation of bark at the base of the trees. Though most of the trunk is still green and plant-like, the bottom inch or two has developed a tree-like bark. Both trees were damaged in their early stages, so there is a clearly visible point where the bark stops. This bark is a new development since the weather started cooling, so I am interested to see if the entire trunk becomes woody as we progress through the winter.

One other thing I noticed in the past couple months is that the avocados seem to go through a difficult dormant stage right around 7-9 months. The older avocado, for a long time, seemed to have stopped growing altogether. There were leaf buds visible at the crown of the tree, but they didn't seem to get any larger. The younger avocado also seems to have entered this stage because it shows the same set of leaf buds but exhibits no growth. A few weeks ago I pinched the dormant buds off the older tree and have been rewarded with a flurry of new growth. You can see the new growth in the photo.

I'm not sure how much I want to promote growth at this time, though. With cold weather approaching and the daylight time becoming short, it may be better for the trees to become a bit dormant soon.

There is a slight concern that the younger tree may be a bit anemic. I moved the pots around in the early spring to make room for other things on the veranda, and through the summer it seemed okay. However when the days started becoming shorter, the veranda wall was blocking most of the direct sunshine. Since the avocado tree is fairly short, it wasn't receiving any direct sunlight. I believe this is the reason why the leaves were very light green compared to the older avocado which had much darker leaves. I moved both trees on top of the storage box you see in the picture so that they can receive a whole day's worth of sun everyday. The leaves are no longer yellowish, so I take that as a good sign.

Here is the younger avocado. Note the small leaf buds at the top and the bark at the bottom.


Here is the older avocado. This one also has bark, but you can also see the new flourish of leaves at the top where it was pinched. The leaves always come out at an angle from the point of the pinch.

Avocado: Typhoon 13 and some soil changing

I was supposed to attend some training today, but we wrapped up all the material yesterday and so today I worked from home. This is a good thing because today we will be hit by a pretty decent-sized typhoon. When the rain and wind come, my train is one of the first to stop. So working from home is a whole lot better than worrying about whether I can get home in the evening.

Since I'm at home, I ate lunch with my family. We ordered some pizza. I think I mentioned a long time ago how weird Japanese pizza is. The key is to go along with the weirdness. If you try to fight against it, you will only be disappointed. Avoid the meat-lovers and Italian sausage pizzas and stick with the squid, corn, and potato pizzas. It must be a cultural thing.

This week I took a few minutes to change some of the soil in the older avocado's pot. The soil is a different variety for both avocados, and since the younger one is doing so well, I wanted to see if giving the older avocado some of that soil would help. It's only been a couple days, so it's hard to tell at this point.

I did not change the entire soil, of course. I scraped away about a centimeter of old soil from the pot and refilled the pot with a couple centimeters of new soil. What I found really interesting was that the avocado roots were right at the surface of the soil. I needed to take care when scraping the old soil because I was uncovering roots. The roots themselves were a couple millimeters thick and very wiry. I should have taken a picture!

This week, the younger avocado seems to be having another flourish of leaves. The buds at the top are growing very quickly. You can see one large bud growing in this picture.


You can see the darker, loamier soil in this picture of the older avocado. There is a set of leaf buds at the top of the avocado, but I haven't noticed much change there for a while. I am actually worried that this avocado may be sick.