Behind the Scenes: Documenting Daily Life in a California Commercial Avocado Grove

Behind the scenes, daily life in a California commercial avocado grove is a mix of tree work, irrigation checks and family life happening at the same time. Today we loaded the truck with picking poles, cameras and toddler supplies to show what that really looks like, in a longer format than our usual short clips.

What a family-run commercial grove really looks like

A working avocado grove rarely looks like a polished corporate operation. On any given morning, getting ready means packing picking poles, hand clippers, camera mounts and even potty training supplies into the same vehicle before heading out to our Escondido acreage.

Juggling young children and heavy grove work is demanding, but it is how family groves keep going. In California, where independent growers face hard economics, staying hands-on across every acre is simply how the work gets done.

Read nextPlanting 400 Hass Avocado Trees: Expanding Our Commercial Mountain Grove

Why we are moving beyond short clips

For years we have shared quick glimpses of the grove, from storms and weather events to root systems and pruning. Short videos leave out the context: why the tree does what it does, and why we respond the way we do.

Longer field tours let us cover the topics that matter most:

• Canopy and light: Hass flowers most where the outer canopy is in full light, according to Avocado Production in California: A Cultural Handbook for Growers, Book Two, so how tall and dense a tree gets decides where next year’s fruit sets.
• Irrigation: Getting water to shallow roots on steep hillsides without soaking the soil or running water off the slope.
• Soil and roots: Protecting surface roots with the leaf litter the trees drop themselves, plus added mulch.
• Harvest timing: Judging when fruit is mature on the tree, since avocados do not ripen until they are picked.

Getting underneath the canopy

Most people only see avocados in a store bin, but the important work happens under the tree. Avocado roots are shallow. Of the feeder root length, 80 to 90 percent sits in the top eight to ten inches of soil, and those roots have very few root hairs, so they take up water poorly, according to the handbook.

Walking the rows, we look at leaves for tip burn, heat stress and signs of too much or too little water. Showing those details up close gives home growers and fruit lovers a clear picture of what healthy trees need all year.

What do we look for on a grove walk?

A few things tell us most of what we need to know:

• Leaf tips: Salt builds up in avocado leaves through the season and shows as brown tip burn in fall, followed by leaf drop in winter. The new leaves that replace them grow at the expense of flowering and fruit set, according to Avocado Production in California: A Cultural Handbook for Growers, Book One.
• Wilting: Curling or limp leaves in the heat mean a tree is short on water, unless the soil under it is wet, which points to a root problem.
• Brown-spotted leaves on the ground: Green leaves with brown spots, hanging on the tree and lying underneath, are the field sign of persea mite.
• Fruit on the ground: Missing irrigations for one to two weeks can set off fruit drop, so fallen fruit sends us straight to check the water.

Why is watering a hillside grove so tricky?

Steep-slope groves have been planted in Southern California since the 1970s, and the handbook credits low-volume irrigation, fertilizer injected through the water, and biological pest control with making that possible. Low-volume lines run along the contour of the slope, and each block of trees is watered on its own schedule.

The handbook’s rule of thumb is to water when 30 to 50 percent of the soil’s available water is gone, closer to 30 percent on coarse hillside soils that hold less. It recommends tensiometers, simple soil-moisture gauges, set 2 to 3 feet from the sprinkler in the wetted root zone, to check that the schedule is right. On a slope, water that goes on too fast just runs downhill, so shorter, more frequent runs usually beat one long soak. Then there are the coyotes, which chew drip tubing for water, worst in spring and in the dry fall.

Why does documenting a working grove matter?

Commercial avocado farming in San Diego County has been under real pressure. Book One notes that even after the drought was declared over in 2010, water rates stayed high and set off a downward spiral of groves going out of business in the county. Showing the real routine of our grove, the labor, the equipment and the family time it takes, is our way of helping people understand where California-grown food comes from, and what it takes to keep a grove alive.

Follow along with our field notes as we keep breaking down practical tree care, seasonal irrigation and grove management straight from our hillside rows.

If you want the bigger picture of what a day out here looks like, start with life on a family avocado grove. We also wrote about why we will not quit growing avocados and about teaching kids where avocados come from.