Spring is an important and busy period on the avocado orchard; harvest is underway as is the beginnings of flowering signalling the set of next season’s crop. Andrew Cutfield, general manager of investor relations and supply for Darling Group says the company’s NZ avocado supply arm, Just Avocados, encourages their growers to focus on harvest, pruning and nutrition strategies during spring to optimise flowering and fruit set.
“Practices we see as contributing to success across high performing orchards are harvesting 60-70% of the current season’s crop by the time of flowering to ensure resources are put into setting the next season’s crop, regular seasonal pruning to ensure better production and more consistent cropping, and the provision of nutrients at the right time to balance resource use and encourage adequate flush after flowering which becomes the following season’s flowering and fruiting wood.”
Andrew says bud development looks strong currently and that crop load management will be crucial this year to avoid the depletion of resources within avocado trees.
“Ensure your pruning strategy is in place and contractors are lined up to carry this out. Crop load management may be a significant factor this year to ensure trees don’t get overloaded with the current season’s fruit as well as a heavy set for next season which can trigger poor flowering and fruitset in 2023.”
“Just Avocados’ mantra is that orchard health should not be compromised because of what the market and returns are doing. It’s likely we have another good fruit set coming but we are looking at the following year now and we want our growers to ensure we have strong flower for spring 2023. The practice we advocate is to get crop off, get the trees pruned and get repeatability of fruit set which is your best way to achieve sustainable long-term profitability.”
Andrew says that pruning off the exposed and spent wood and smallest fruit as part of the follow up structural prune will likely pay dividends in the future
“The value of a better resourced tree and better tree architecture for this spring and more importantly the following spring will strongly outweigh any revenue from smaller fruit.”