From Our Family to Yours
The Holmes Grown Blog
Start Here: Complete Guides
New here? These pull everything together in one place — how to grow avocado trees, how much water an avocado tree needs and what it really costs to run a California avocado farm. See all guides.
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Latest from the Grove
Why We Replanted 400 Hass Avocado Trees: Reinvesting in California Agriculture
Planting 400 Hass avocado trees on five acres is our direct answer to anyone questioning whether commercial avocado farming still has a…
When a Root Rot Tree Comes Out: Replanting on Tolerant Rootstock
What is root rot? It is a disease that affects many kinds of trees, avocados among them, and it is one of…
The Property Walk: Why We Check Our Avocado Trees Several Times a Week
We check our avocado trees several times a week because small changes are easy to see when you look often, and small…
Our Youngest Reed Avocado Tree Blooms for the First Time
We have a small piece of good news from the farm. Our newest baby tree, a Reed avocado, is finally blossoming. The…
Avocado Growing Tips
When to Plant an Avocado Tree: Frost, Scorch and Your USDA Zone
A young avocado tree has two enemies in its first months: frost and scorching sun. Plant too late in the cool season…
Avocado Tree Leaf Health: Identifying New Growth, Leaf Shapes, and Pest Signs
Healthy new avocado growth is often reddish-bronze and soft, brown tips on older leaves in fall usually mean salt or chloride buildup,…
How to Save a Dying Avocado Tree: Diagnosing Root Compaction and Soil Stress
A dying avocado tree can often be saved if the problem is caught early and it is underground: compacted soil, waterlogged roots…
Avocado Tree Sunburn and Pruning Water Sprouts: How to Protect Grove Yields
Avocado limbs sunburn when they lose the leaf cover that normally shades them, and the fix is to manage the canopy so…
Water & Irrigation
Avocado Water Usage: How Much Water Does It Really Take to Grow an Avocado?
It takes roughly 40 to 60 gallons of water to grow one avocado, depending on the age of the tree, the soil…
Avocado Heat Stress: Managing Irrigation and Wilting Leaves During Extreme Temperatures
When an avocado tree’s leaves curl and wilt in a heat wave, the tree is losing water faster than its roots can…
How Much Water Does an Avocado Tree Need? A Grower’s Complete Guide
An avocado takes 40 to 60 gallons. What that means next to a glass of milk, what your own tree actually needs,…
Avocado Tree Water Usage vs Lawn Irrigation: Calculating California Farm Water Needs
A mature avocado tree and a modest patch of lawn use roughly the same amount of water over a growing season —…
Field Notes
Saving a 100-Year-Old California Avocado Legacy: Why We Chose the Family Farm Over a Buyout
California avocado farming is facing an unprecedented economic squeeze, driving thousands of multigenerational growers out of the agricultural industry. In Escondido, our…
Avocado Fruit Drop After Windstorms: Why Ground Fruit Can’t Be Sold
Avocado fruit drop is an unavoidable part of orchard life, but when severe weather sweeps through Southern California, the losses become immediately…
What It Really Costs to Run a California Avocado Farm
We harvested 52,000 pounds of premium Hass and lost $30,203. The full economics of a California avocado grove: water, farm gate pricing,…
Avocado Math: How We Lost $30,203 on 52,000 Pounds of Hass
People assume that owning an avocado grove in Southern California is easy money. The truth sitting in our grower statement says otherwise.…
Choose, Ripen & Use
Avocado Varieties: Types of Avocados and How They Taste
Hundreds of avocado varieties, and they really do taste different. How Hass, Fuerte, Reed, Bacon and more taste, what to use each…
How to Tell If an Avocado Is Bad (and When It Only Looks Bad)
Wrinkled, blackened skin does not mean an avocado has gone off. A California grower on the stem test, what spoilage really looks…
Hass vs Fuerte: Why Your Grocery Store Only Sells One
Hass owns the grocery shelf because it travels well, not because it is the best avocado. What Fuerte is actually like, and…
How Long Do Shipped Avocados Last? A Grower’s Honest Answer
Shipped avocados last longer than store-bought, not shorter, because they arrive unripe. What a week in transit actually does to the fruit,…
Avocado History
California Avocado Growers: Why Only 1,700 Commercial Farms Remain (1982 vs Today)
Only about 1,700 commercial avocado growers remain in California. Where the figure comes from, what 1982 satellite imagery shows, and what pushed…
Why Fuerte Lost California to Hass: Alternate Bearing and a Mail Carrier’s Tree
Why does everybody grow Hass? It was not always that way. For a long stretch, the avocado California growers planted was the…
The History of California Avocados, From Escondido to Today
How California avocados got here: the early introductions, the varieties that won, and the growers who are left.
Fuerte vs Hass Avocado Growing Season: Why Bloom Dates Do Not Predict Harvest
Fuerte and Hass can bloom in the same spring weeks and still ripen months apart, because each variety’s genetics, not its bloom…
Life on a Grove
Life on a Family Avocado Grove
What a year on a family avocado grove actually looks like, season by season.
Why We Will Not Quit Growing Avocados
A comment came in suggesting we should stop growing food and simply retire. The argument was essentially that we live in a…
The Sideways Fuerte: A Wind-Toppled Tree That Kept Growing
This tree used to stand upright like any other. Then a windstorm pushed it over, and its main trunk ended up lying…
Raising Kids on an Avocado Farm: Building Legacy in the Soil
Raising kids on an avocado farm teaches them where food comes from in a way no screen can: they dig in real…
