Daleys Fruit Tree Blog: September 2017

Avocado Trees will get sunburnt and die in Australian Summers. If you don't do this when they are young and prepare an adequate shelter it is very likely it will not survive until it has produced and adequate canopy.

We demonstrate how we paint our avocado Trees and set up a shelter for them.

Avocado Fruit Trees are for sale at Daleys Fruit Tree Nursery
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Video Transcript
so today we're painting Avocado trees
and the reason that we're doing this is
we are protecting our trees from sunburn
so this is basically sunscreen for your
Avocado. Now if you look at this stem of
your avocado tree you can see it has
this beautiful green stem and this is a
really healthy looking plant and it's
very susceptible to sunburn when it's
this age because you can see it's quite
sparsely leafed it doesn't have a full
canopy and it's not going to have a full
canopy of life to protect it until it's
well established and about 2 or 3 years
old so young trees like this it is
really important to protect them from
hot Summer Sun so as the weather is
warming up here in the spring we're
going to paint our avocado trees we're
going to give them a coat of sun
sunscreen to protect them from the hot
Summer Sun the other thing you need to
do at this time of the year is if you
see any flowers just pick them out you
don't want a tree this size making fruit
I know it's heartbreaking but you do
need to leave it until it's well
established to let it fruit so just note
that as well so the first thing you need
to do is you need to locate the graft on
your trunk of your tree and the reason
you need to do this is because anything
that shoots below the graft you need to
remove that's desuckering so this is
the Scion this is the grafted part of
your tree it's the variety which has the
good quality for it you want and in this
case it's a Sheppard avocado this is a
seedling avocado so anything that shoots
from below this point you need to remove
so when you paint your tree and I've
done one here you can see it's quite
difficult to see the graft Union so it's
really important before you start locate
the graft make a note where it is and if
necessary you can just put a little bit
of different coloured paint on that part
of the tree so you know exactly where it
is this is our Sun screen this is the
paint that we're going to put on our
tree the trunk of our tree to protect it
and it's just house emulsion so if
you've got some acrylic wall paint that
is perfect but you're going to dilute it
about one part paint to three parts
water and what you get is a very liquid
mix of
paint that goes on very easily it's
going to be a bit messy so just be careful
where you get it try not to get it all
over yourselves
and we're just going to paint the trunk of the tree
So even once you've painted the stem on your Avocado Tree.
you're still going to need to protect it
from the very hot summer weather that we
get here in Australia and this is a
great thing to do it with this is a
sock made out of shade cloth and it's
just been sewed together in a double
width so it's basically a tube of double
shade cloth and it's the height of the
tree once you plant it in the ground so
you just put three star pickets in the
ground and put that over your avocado
tree and it's going to protect it during
very hot weather on very hot days when
it's going to be 35 40 or more make sure
you put an additional cover over the top
of that just to protect that tree during
the very hot part of the day you can
take that cover off in the morning and
late in the afternoon once the weather's
cooled off but that's going to protect
your tree during summer and get it well
established which is a really important
thing to do with our Avocado trees make
sure they don't get sunburned because it
is a very damaging thing and you will risk
losing your graft Rodney has generously
offered to hammer in the star pickets
for me to show you how to do this
and it lets the air flow through but it
protects your tree from the sunshine and
then once you've got your shade cloth
over bang in your other star pickets to
make a nice tight triangle
so if you've got your avocado planted
and you don't have the gear on hand to
make your little shade house you can do a
quick cheap fix just to protect it while
you get everything organized so you just
need to cut some nice bushy foliage off
an existing tree from your garden
Callistemons are great melaleucas are
great this is Nandina it's just going to
work as a temporary shade wall and
you're going to pop it in on the western
side so if I can just push these in it's
a little bit hard in our demonstration
spot here so the idea is that you just
want to create a shade wall that's going
to protect your tree while you actually
get your shade house establish so you
can then go off and build your little
shade shade cloth house and get your
star pickets and you're ready to protect
it on a more permanent basis so this is
just a temporary fix that works quite
well just to save it from a hot day in
the meantime

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Welcome to Spring 2017