When and how should you prune your Avocado tree?
The Avocado tree is a native of South America and its natural habitat is the rainforest. It does not like the cold, the wind, or soggy soil.
For the home gardener as long as you have warm temperatures you can manipulate the conditions so you have wind protection and free-draining soil to grow your own Avocado tree to produce this amazing fruit.
As the fruit grows from new wood, keeping your tree regularly pruned will improve the quantity of fruit produced and give you access to all the fruit as the tree grows. Pruning should take place in Spring.
After fruiting on the new wood, it will not fruit from here again. Trim branches that are too high and too wide but don’t give it an overall haircut unless you are prepared to lose a season of fruit. Keep on top of the pruning so you can alternate your pruning sites over several years. Thin the tree occasionally to allow light in and the fruit to ripen.
If you do need to give an Avocado tree an overall haircut in one season, this will not harm the tree it will just limit any fruit production, Of course over the following years it will fruit abundantly.
Tipping a younger tree that hasn’t yet reached the desired height is also useful to increase fruit production.
There is nothing like eating fruit from your own tree, so it’s worth a bit of effort to trim it right and reap the benefits.