An Easter Egg Hunt in the Avocado Grove
This one is short: fifteen seconds of Easter on the farm, with an egg hunt among the trees and not much talking. It is exactly what it looks like, and we are sharing it because moments like this are a big part of why we do this at all.
Why hunt eggs in the grove?
Because it is there. Most families hide eggs behind the couch or around the yard. Our yard happens to have fruit trees in it, and the hunt goes wherever the trees and bushes offer a good hiding spot. For a small kid, a grove is about the best hide-and-seek ground there is.
We grow more than avocados around the house, and the kitchen garden and other fruit trees are part of the same picture. We wrote about that side of things in growing fruit trees on an avocado farm.
Read nextAt Least 750 Avocados on One Tree: Estimating a Loaded Tree in March
Easter falls in blossom season
Easter lands in spring, and spring is when avocado trees bloom. In San Diego County, most of the Hass bloom opens over about six weeks from late March to early May, so an Easter egg hunt usually falls right in the middle of it. If you look past the eggs, the trees are covered in small flowers. Each one is a possible avocado, although only a tiny share of the flowers ever set fruit.
How many avocado flowers become fruit?
Far fewer than you would guess. A full-grown avocado tree can carry up to a million flowers in a single spring. On average, fewer than 200 of them set fruit that hangs on all the way to harvest. That is a small fraction of one percent, and it is completely normal: no tree could carry an avocado from every flower.
What is going on inside each flower?
Avocado flowers have an unusual habit. Every flower opens twice. It opens first as a female, ready to receive pollen, closes, and then reopens the next day as a male and sheds its pollen. Hass is a Type A variety: its flowers are female on the morning of the first day and male in the afternoon of the second. Type B varieties such as Fuerte and Bacon run the opposite schedule. Bees carry the pollen around, and in cool spring weather the two stages overlap on the same tree. We go into it more in Type A and Type B avocado flowering.
Weather matters as much as bees. In a cold spell, the flowers open late and out of step, and when temperatures stay below about 60°F, fruit set can fail almost entirely. A warm, sunny Easter week is good for more than egg hunting.
Bloom is the start of next season’s crop, and it is the part of the year we watch most closely. Pollination is its own fascinating subject, and we have tried a few things to help it along, including planting sunflowers to draw in pollinators.
The reason behind the farm
We took over this land in late 2024 and have been learning ever since. A lot of the work is hard and not very photogenic. But a morning like this one, with a kid running through the trees looking for eggs, is the point of it. We have written more about that in life on an avocado grove.
If you would like a taste of the grove yourself, our 4lb Hass box and 6lb Hass box ship free when the fruit is on, and you can join the waitlist on either page in the months between. Until the trees are picking again, the avocado scoop, the Hawaiian shirt and our hats ship year-round.
Try this: If your tree is in blossom, pick one flower cluster and keep an eye on it through the season. Almost none of those flowers become fruit, and watching it happen teaches fruit set faster than any number.
This post is part of our guide to life on our family grove.
