Just when your avocado flowers become fruitless, and your excitement is heightened, the fruitlets start to drop off the tree. Then you ask yourself, ”Why are my baby avocados falling off the tree?”
It can be normal for some young avocado fruits to drop as a natural process, relieving the tree of excess fruit that burdens the plant. However, when the dropping becomes rampant, it might be due to other reasons and not the normal fruit drop.
Below, we look at all the possible reasons that make baby avocados drop. Let’s get straight into it.
Natural Self-Thinning
As we said above, young avocados falling off their tree may be a natural occurrence to regulate the crop load. The plant is said to be self-thinning its crop load.
Nobody can stop this process, as the tree knows how much fruit it can handle and how much it cannot.
Pests and Diseases
Infestation of pests such as avocado thrips and persea mites does cause baby avocados to fall off their trees.
Avocado thrips feed on the stem and damage it, causing the fruit to drop. If you see thrips on your tree, it’s probably too late to save the fruit.
To know the presence of mites, you will discover spots on the avocado leaves, a silver web, and the leaf finally drops.
You can, however, spray the tree with appropriate pesticides to ward off these pests for the following season.
Water Stress
Don’t underwater or overwater your avocado tree to prevent water stress that causes baby avocados to drop.
Ensure your soil’s drainage and moisture level is optimum to maintain your plants’ health and produce high-quality avocado fruits.
You can identify poor soil drainage by experimenting with how long the water takes to run through the soil. In potted trees, you can fix poor drainage by repotting the tree with fresh soil.
The finger test is a simple yet effective way to determine whether your tree is over or under-watered. Push your finger 2-4 inches into the soil. If you discover it’s dry, water it, but if wet, wait until the soil dries up.
Incomplete Pollination
Even under optimal growing conditions, not all flowers are sufficiently pollinated whenever pollination occurs. This makes some young avocado fruits fall off the tree.
To solve this problem, you can encourage a greater presence of pollination facilitators (such as bees) during your tree’s bloom time.
Weather
Avocado trees are highly susceptible to extreme weather conditions like frost, hail, wind, and heat.
Cover your trees with sheets during freezing temperatures for warmth and extra insulation. In a windstorm, you can support your avocado tree with tree stakes to prevent damage.
Excess heat causes stress to avocado trees, making them drop off their fruit prematurely. It would help if you watered your tree, especially on hot days. You can also provide mulch and compost to prevent the drying out of the soil by the sun.
When Do Avocado Trees Drop Their Fruit?
Most avocado trees drop fruit before August, depending on how stressed they are. Other varieties like Hass might still drop until mid-August but not further.
Some avocado varieties take a while to bloom and continue dropping later than expected.
How to Minimize Baby Avocados Falling Off the Tree
There are ways to keep as many avocado fruits on the trees as possible. Here are some:
- Proper irrigation practices to avoid overwatering or underwatering the trees.
- Researchers have recommended pruning techniques to reduce fruit drops.
- Cross-pollination. There are ways to go about this, including grafting in a pollenizer branch and using a potted pollenizer tree.
- Maintaining optimum soil moisture and drainage.
How to Make Your Avocado Tree Bear Fruit Faster.
Do you want your baby avocados to produce fruit in a short time? We have your back.
- Keep your avocado tree adequately hydrated.
- Ensure the plant gets 6-8 hours of partial sun per day.
- Use fertilizer about 5-7 times annually – ensure you get the right blend of fertilizer for your tree.
- Prune your tree to get rid of damaged stems and branches for the best results.
- Patience is also key if you want your baby avocados to bear fruit faster. Understand that some trees may take time to adapt to their environment.
Final Thoughts
We feel excited once we see flowers appear on our avocado tree because we know that the avocado fruit will soon start to grow.
Doubts and frustration follow when we later observe avocados fall from the tree prematurely. Knowing the cause of dropping is important to prescribe the correct measures to counter the issue.
This article has covered much on why baby avocados fall off the tree. The insight you gather here will help you handle the problem of dropping better next time.
