Prune Hass avocado trees:
As a parent, can you forget to nurture or train your child?
I know you’ll never forget it that CRUCIAL parental responsibilty.
Why?
“You want your child to become a responsible person in the future.”
“The same case applies to Hass avocado trees.”
Caring for your trees involves knowing the entire tricks on how to prune avocado trees.
This knowledge is absoultely necessary For them to continue giving you high-quality fruits.
Unfortunately, most Hass avocado farmers forget to prune their avocado trees.
They just let them grow anyhow they want.
“If they knew the increased yield they would achieve, just by pruning their Hass avocado trees, they would never neglect this responsibility.”
Did you know that:
- Pruning of Hass avocado trees makes a difference in the value of the fruits produced by the farmer?
- Well maintained and pruned trees produce fruits with higher amounts of avocado oil thus creamier and tastier fruit?
- Pruned Hass avocado trees are HIGHLY RESISTANT to diseases thus produce healthy fruits?
- Pruned Hass avocado trees have an excellent architecture that makes it easy to harvest, and spray pesticides or foliar fertilizers?
- Have a better penetration of sunlight thus making the avocado fruits creamier and sweet instead of watery?
5 Top Reasons Why We Prune Avocado Trees
- To get better light penetration into the tree
Pruning of avocado trees allows us to expose a large percentage of the tree’s foliage to sunlight thus making the leaves more efficient in the production of food for the development of fruits.
- You reduce the incidences of fungal diseases
If branches crowd together, humidity within the canopy of the tree increases.
High humidity around the flowers provides suitable conditions for fungal spores to penetrate developing fruits; thus pruning serves to reduce the moisture while increasing light inside the tree canopy.
- Control size and vigor
Avocado trees if left to grow on their own, BECOME TALL AND DANGEROUS.
Varieties such as Fuerte, and Puebla can reach a height of 10 meters which makes harvesting hard and hazardous.
Pruning, therefore, helps to make the tree of manageable height.
- Maintain yield and quality
The market prefers bigger fruits, but when a tree bears an unusually high number of developing fruits, they tend to be smaller.
To discourage the production of many small avocado fruits, we remove some of the developing fruits (thinning out) —a practice will tend to produce heavier avocadoes.
- Bring neglected Avocado trees back into condition
Pruning stimulates the growth of new shoots and rejuvenates old trees.
When you don’t prune avocado fruit trees, they grow very tall thus ruling out spraying pesticides and fungicides on them using cheap and simple equipment for example knapsack sprayers.
When To Prune An Avocado Tree
- During transplanting
The first pruning takes place at this stage. We trim any broken or very long roots so that they can fit into the planting hole.
- At the close of harvest and before flowering
For mature plants, pruning is typically carried out at this stage. Excess branches are removed to open up the tree to air and light.
- At the Seedling Stage
Grafted Hass avocado plants sometimes produce suckers when they are still at the nursery.
Removing these suckers is a part of pruning.
Suckers are those shoots that emerge from the rootstalk that have the potential to grow into new plants.
When suckers are left to grow, they will compete with the tree for nutrients and eventually reduce the yields of the main tree.
- When the tree is fruiting
During fruiting, the tree can produce very many fruits.
As much as this holds the potential for large harvests, the production of many fruits will mean that they will be of small size.
To make the fruits become bigger, you have to remove some of them.
This process of removing some fruits is known as thinning out.
Thinning out discourages biennial bearing.
Precautions During Pruning of Avocado Trees
- Sterilize the pruning tools before you move to the next tree.
Doing so will prevent the transfer of viral diseases from tree to tree.
The sterilization of pruning tools is easy. All you have to do is to dip the pruning-devices in a disinfectant of 20% household bleach solution between trees to prevent spreading of any sap–borne diseases such as viral infections or fungal problems like Phytophthora from an infected plant to healthy ones
- Use a sharp panga, secateurs, or pruning saw.
Using sharp tools enables you to make a clean cut of branches.
Clean cuts make the pruning job look professional and promote the quick healing of the pruning wounds.
That’s it for today.
What are your thoughts on this?
Share them below in the comments sections below
Related:
Use the Right Equipment for Pruning your avocado trees Click on Image For More Details
A secateour will help you make a slanting clean cut when you prune your avocado trees.
Clean cuts by sharp tools encourages faster healing, and prevents the transmission of disease from one plant to another.
