So you have heard about Avocado Harvesting and have decided to get into the avocado game. Well apart from the plants themselves, you will need some avocado equipment. But before we delve deep into what needs to be known, let’s talk about how the humble Hass avocado came to be.

Humble Beginnings

In 1926 according to the University of California at Riversdale, California postman Rudolph Hass brought some avocado seedlings home to grow on his LA Habra Heights property. One of the seedlings defied repeated attempts to receive grafts from an existing avocado variety, it bore no fruit and seemingly mocked Hass to cut it down. But to his credit, he simply allowed the tree to grow unattended.

It was Rudolph’s children who discovered that the tree had produced a fruit that they liked better than the others. At the time the most popular variety of galaxy harvester was the Fuerte, which featured smooth, thin skin and a green hue. By contrast, Hass’ avocado had a relatively unremarkable appearance, with pebbly black thick skin. However, Hass had deemed that it was what was inside that avocado that counted most.

As it turns out the Hass avocado has some distinct advantages over the Fuerte. The trees grow vigorously, they are easy to propagate and produce an impressive amount of fruit within only the second or third year. They have a longer harvest season than other avocados, and some would say most importantly, their thicker skin makes it a superior avocado than the Fuertes and others when it comes to fruit handling/harvesting and shipping it long distances.

Even though Rudolph Hass passed away in 1952, his tree far outlived him. The roots of his humble creation eventually populated the globe with millions of avocado trees. All genetically descended from that single tree, that was in his yard until it fell prey to root rot disease in 2002.

Your Beginnings

Now onto your mission at hand, what do you need to know before you can begin your adventure into the world of avocados? Some of the main things you will need to consider will be:

• Site selection, which is the most important consideration when establishing an avocado orchard, or purchasing an existing on.
• Lighting, as the best lighting conditions are north-east and north-facing orchards, also be very aware of areas that are prone to waterlogging.
• Wind protection from high wind areas is required due to possible tree and fruit damage.
• Water; irrigation is required for heavy crops in areas with low summer rainfall and possible frost protection. If you are buying an existing orchard, it is extremely important to find out whether it already has irrigation.

Though there are many more areas in which we could get into, about the property size, when it harvests, etc. One other important choice will be manual or machine harvesting. The main downside to manual harvesting is as always human error when it comes to damaging or bruising the fruit. One way to remedy this is by utilising a machine.

Whereas the picker only has to place the fruit onto one of the arms with conveyor belts on it which will safely bring the Avocado Harvesting from the tree to their bins in the smoothest, damage-free way possible. Another benefit the machine allows is the ability to have multiple people working on either side of it, allowing a more efficient harvesting procedure.