Gardening with Gael: Trial and error as local avocado established

Back in 1976 I lived on the Tara, a volcanic knoll west of Mangawhai Village. At the time I had three small children and my husband ran a beef and dairy farm. My garden was slowly taking over the surrounding paddocks.

We were sitting, one day, on the swinging chairs outside the house talking about the farm. I was not that brilliant at helping with the animals (at all) and we were thinking of diversifying somehow and because I am much better with plants I suggested that maybe we could use the wonderful volcanic soil and grow something. But what? It was in the days before Google and research was more difficult. Farm advisers were a great help and we discovered that a new crop called avocados did very well on free draining soil. We knew nothing about them. I remember we were given some and had no idea what to do with them. They went black and rotten.

Avocados were being grown in the Bay of Plenty by then, and up north, and everyone was very generous with their knowledge and freely gave advice. The trees reminded me of magnolias and we liked the idea that the major ‘pick’ of the fruit would be over before the heat of the summer kicked in. Avocados these days seem to have a long extended season, providing us all with almost year round varieties. With the help of friends and family we planted the first avocados on a run-off we had further up the Tara Road. My nephew remembers planting ‘his’ first avocado there.

That first paddock was a huge learning curve. Avocados are prone to a root rot called phytophera and the wet lower part of the paddock wiped out many of those early trees.

Avocado flowers open one day as female and the next day as male. They are self-pollinating, however we decided we would plant predominantly Hass and intersperse them with a few Fuerte avocados to help with the pollination. We soon learnt plenty about eating them. We bought boxes of avocados for their seeds. Friends and family got to eat the flesh and give back the seeds. I gained about 5 kilos in as many days!

When the seeds were returned to us we grew them and once the seedlings reached a certain stage, we grafted cuttings from mature avocados. Once again fellow growers proved generous with their support. I particularly enjoyed this part of the process. A small team of us became very adept at grafting and once the trees were big enough Reade was able to collect graft wood from our own trees. Seedling avocados take years to fruit and the type of fruit they throw can be absolutely haphazard. In my experience here in the sand, trees grown from random seeds tend to be a green thin skinned variety.

Just as the trees came in to production we separated and I did not see the orchard reach maturity. Reade, however, and his second wife Margie, went on to establish a very successful enterprise and were able to pass on their knowledge to other fledgling avocado growers. From those early beginnings in the ‘70s the face of the entire Tara has changed. Avocados flourish on all sides of the volcanic knoll. Reade passed away recently. The legacy he left is evident all over the landscape. Our love and thoughts are with you Margie and whanau.

Hass avocado trees account for about 80 per cent of avocados eaten worldwide.