How To FERTILIZE AVOCADO TREES For INSANE Fruit Set [COMPLETE GUIDE]

what's going on gardeners it's saturday december 18th and it is an unseasonably warm day here on the southeastern coast of north carolina and today i'm going to show all of you a complete guide for fertilizing avocado trees in ground as well as give you all the number one tip that you absolutely must do at this time of year right now if you're new to the channel please consider subscribing and hitting the bell to receive new video notifications and check out our amazon storefront and spreadshop in the video description for a list of the gardening products i use and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated avocado trees are not your typical fruit tree they're very different and because of this we have to approach the fertilizing schedule differently when it comes to fertilizing most fruit trees they have a very typical seasonal pattern especially if you live in the united states that has a mostly temperate to subtropical climate most fruit trees that we are used to they go through a dormancy or a slow growth period in the late fall through the winter and then they begin to wake up from this slower dormant period in early spring and then flower in the middle of the spring for a harvest either in late spring sometime in the summer or early fall avocado trees are different avocado trees are evergreen trees from the subtropical highlands where they don't have a big difference in daylight and warmth between the winter and the summer so because of that they grow all year round they don't have a dormant period or a period of slow growth and the interesting thing about avocado trees is they flower in the wintertime this semi-dwarf lila avocado that i have here growing in zone eight coastal north carolina flowers for me usually sometime in either late january or in february depending on how mild the season is we had a cold winter last season so it flowered a little late in february this year we're having a very warm and mild winter so far so my tree is already beginning to show the initial budding and i will take you in for a closer look here you can clearly see the buds forming on my avocado tree and those buds within the next probably three to six weeks at some point are going to open up into gorgeous yellow flowers and this tree is starting to show buds all over it everywhere we look all over this avocado tree we see buds forming at all of the various nodes so as long as we fertilize this tree very well in order to support the budding and support the generation of new buds we should have a very successful flowering season this winter and that's what sets avocado trees apart from most fruit trees when growing most fruit trees we generally don't fertilize them in the winter because they go through a period of dormancy and we don't want to wake them up out of dormancy during the cold season by introducing any kind of rapid growth from a fertilizer when it comes to growing an avocado tree though the winter is their flowering season so that is when they need one of the most tremendous boosts of energy in order to support all of the flowering and then have enough energy to turn those flowers into fruit and then hold those fruits into the summer so what i'm going to do for you in this video is i'm going to show you how i fertilize my avocado tree during this time of the year in order to boost flower production by using strategic fertilizing methods and if you're growing an avocado tree chances are you should be doing this as well right now because there's a really good chance that your avocado tree is going to begin budding very soon now as i mentioned avocado trees grow 365 days a year so because of that we need to fertilize avocado trees every single season every spring every summer every fall and every winter so that's four times a year we want to fertilize our in-ground avocado trees now three of those seasons the spring the summer and the fall i fertilize them exactly the same but the winter fertilizing which is this fertilizing right now gets added ingredients in order to support that flowering cycle that only happens during this time of year so what i'm first going to do is i'm going to show you what you do every single season no matter what and then i will show you what you need to do during the winter in order for that special sauce to get your trees to flower more and produce more fruit now the first thing that you'll notice is that i have a heavy mulch layer around my avocado tree and that's because avocados have a lot of surface roots they need to be planted elevated in fast draining soil and those surface roots like to be covered by mulch so when i prune my avocado tree a couple of months ago in a video that i will link to above in case you're curious how to do that i made sure to save all of my prunings and i mulch the bottom of the avocado tree with this so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to pull this mulch away because we need to get down to the soil to place our organic fertilizer now that i pulled the mulch away i want you to look at how gorgeous this underlying soil is and how deep dark and black it is and this is mostly a hardwood bowl uh this is mostly a hardwood bark mulch layer that i put down around all of my trees around the house so i actually need to pull this away and when i start pulling this away i will get down to the soil and that is when you will start to see these surface roots from the avocado check it out this is a surface root right here these are all surface roots from the tree in order to support what i'm saying here so you can see just how far out all of these surface roots come out just check them out they are everywhere and if i dig around the tree into the soil line you will see these everywhere this is why you must keep a mulch layer on your avocado tree in order to keep these surface roots nice and moist at all times so now that we've pulled back the mulch layer of the soil we want to fertilize them no matter what time of year it is with some type of all-purpose organic fertilizer so i'm using a five four four right here that's a five percent nitrogen four percent phosphorous four percent potassium npk ratio but you can use uh any organic fertilizer that's close to a five five five so if you use a three five six a four five four a four four four it doesn't matter they will all be good that's all that you're looking for so all that's important right here is that it is organic and the reason why is because we want to build our soil over the years and organic fertilizers that are granulated and slow release like this attract worms and bacteria and fungi to come in and break it down these are precursors to compost they're not immediately bioavailable by the tree itself they have to be broken down by soil life so i'm going to take a one cup measuring cup right here and then i'm going to take one cup of fertilizer and sprinkle it around the soil line out where the roots are so you want to go out about a foot or two so one cup does one half of the tree and then one cup is going to do the next half of the tree so for all intents and purposes we are going to spread evenly two cups of organic 555 granulated fertilizer around the base of this entire tree and then we're going to lightly work the fertilizer into the top inch or half an inch of the soil just to get it covered up now regardless if it was spring summer fall or winter you would do this step but because this is winter this is when our tree is going to flower and bloom so we need to give it extra phosphorus for support and that's because phosphorus is the plant macronutrient largely responsible for the fruiting cycle of the plant in your npk ratio the n nitrogen is responsible primarily for leafy green growth p the middle number phosphorus is primarily responsible for the flowering and fruiting of the plant whereas the last l the last number k potassium that is responsible for the overall metabolic process and overall cellular health of the plant so since we're going to get lots of blooms soon we want to support them with additional phosphorus and to to give them additional phosphorus my favorite product is this bone meal right here this bone meal product right here is a total of 2 14 0. it's 2 nitrogen 14 phosphorus and 0 potassium it's also 15 calcium so the added phosphorus and the calcium in this bag right here is going to be gangbusters for the fruiting cycle of this plant however remember this is an organic product this is going to take months to fully decompose and break down because the soil microbiology has to consume it so that's why i want to give it to this tree now because if i give it to this tree now it will feed it throughout the winter all the way into the spring and give it that slow release of phosphorus and calcium that will be great to support not only flowering but the formation of fruits now during the spring summer and fall fertilizings since we already put down the organic granulated five 555-type fertilizer all you'd normally have to do is just water it in really well to help the decomposition process and then put your mulch back in place but again because we are trying to induce additional blooming we're going to give them this bone meal product so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take one cup of this bone meal and i'm going to lightly sprinkle it around the entire root area of this tree and then just like the organic 555 based granulated fertilizer we're going to slowly work the bone meal into the top roughly half an inch to an inch of soil now we're going to add a bag of cow manure compost around the base of the tree and this is the time of year that i like to introduce the compost because it takes a very long time to break down and it also acts as a mulch layer and the compost generally hangs around for the better part of a year you can play it by ear if you want to add another bag in the summer if you're seeing weed penetration or you don't see a lot of organic matter left in your soil you can add more compost but now's a good time to definitely add it and also to further bury the bone meal and the granulated fertilizer that you just put down so i'm simply going to place this around the tree now that all the granulated organic fertilizers have been put down and the compost has been placed on top we are going to put our mulch layer back on top and then water it in very well so we prevent any of the mulch and the fertilizers that we just put down from eroding away and if you have enough mulch left over under your tree you can just scoop it back there but if you don't have enough mulch now was a great time to add a fully natural mulch like hardwood bark mulch or wheat straw or seed free grass clippings or any other kind of natural or organic mulch to put down on top just don't use any kind of dyed mulch or anything like that now i'm going to show you my secret weapon that will dramatically increase flowering and blooming in most cases and in order to induce heavy blooming i am going to use a synthesized soluble fertilizer made by jax called blossom booster 10 30 20 which means it's 10 percent nitrogen 30 phosphorus and 20 potassium so it has a phosphorus to nitrogen ratio of three to one three times more concentration of phosphorus than nitrogen and that helps heavily sway the energy inside that tree into producing more buds now i showed you before that i used all of this organic granulated slow release fertilizer both a an organic 555 type for general overall productivity and a bone meal for the additional phosphorus and calcium however they take months to break down they will slowly feed the tree over many months because my tree is starting to bloom right now i need to hit it with something heavily bioavailable to help boost those blooms so that's why i want to use this soluble synthesized product it's not a chemical any more than the organic types are it's not going to harm your soil it's not going to harm your soil life it is just going to be a quick feed almost like a giant multivitamin to help that flowering and fruiting so in front of me i have two one and a half gallon watering cans for a total of three gallons liquid volume and i'm going to mix this blossom booster formula at a rate of 1 tablespoon per gallon because that is the directions of this specific fertilizer check your fertilizer and use it at the appropriate rate per the manufacturer so this is a one and a half tablespoon scooper going into a one and a half gallon watering can and the reason why i'm going to use watering cans to distribute it is because i want to slowly pour the uh the solution around the bottom of the plant i don't want to wash away any of the fertilizers that i just put down by dumping like a five gallon bucket on it and i'm also going to fortify uh the solution with an alaska fish emulsion fish fertilizer because i've had amazing success with stuff with this stuff so i'm going to give a healthy glove of probably about three tablespoons or so into each watering can and then we're going to fill both with water stir it around and then place it around the base of our tree if you'd like to know where you can buy those big economy size bags of the jacks blossom booster fertilizer i have them linked in my amazon storefront in the video description for a very affordable price if you don't need a bag that big you can simply use the miracle grow purple boxes of flower food bloom booster 15 30 50 which are also linked in my amazon storefront as well as readily available in every big box store now that i have all the fertilizers mixed i'm going to evenly pour the three gallons of fertilizer around the base of the tree and that right there is how you fertilize an in-ground avocado tree now if you have any questions or require further details please ask them down in the comments and i will do my best to respond to as many of them as possible and as always if you found this video helpful please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and ring that notification bell so you're notified when we upload more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products that i used in this video or that i use in my garden in general they are all linked in my amazon storefront down in the video description so check out that for awesome garden products also while you're down there check out my spreadshop for custom-made merch if you'd like to support the channel thank you all again so much for watching and i hope to see all of you again on the next video dale snoring look at the size of that nose he's shaking the house [Music]

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 141,901

Keywords: how to fertilize avocado trees, fertilizing avocado trees, fertilizing avocados, how to fertilize avocados, avocado fertilizer, avocado tree fruiting, growing avocados, growing avocado trees, avocado tree, avocado trees, avocados, avocado, avocado tree care, fruit tree, fruit trees, growing fruit trees, growing, grow, garden, gardening, gardening tips, garden tips, gardening tips and tricks, vegetable garden, vegetable gardening, organic gardening, how to, millennial gardener

Id: STEBzYocWio

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 30 2021