Garden
Picking Avocados: Best Way to Tell If an Avocado Is Ripe
- If there was any fruit that identified most with Southern California, that icon of buttery goodness would be the avocado.
- And out there, the king of avocados is the Hass. Once an obscure cultivar, it now accounts for 80 percent of the world’s avocado crop and 90 percent of California’s avocado crop, where San Diego leads the way with the highest number of orchards.
- We all know that when we buy avocados at the store, they’re usually hard and unripe but begin to soften a couple days after bringing them home.
- If you grow your own avocado tree, however, how do you know when to pick an avocado?
- Well, that depends on the type of avocado you have—and it’s a little bit trickier than just giving your fruit a squeeze. (I’ll help you figure this out below!)
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History of the Hass avocado
- Hass avocados are the most common avocados sold commercially, and a popular variety you’ll find at garden centers and nurseries. Their namesake, Rudolph Hass, was a US Postal Service carrier and a hobby horticulturist living in La Habra Heights, California.
- In 1926, Hass purchased seeds from a fellow avocado enthusiast and planted them in his fledgling avocado grove. The subspecies of the seeds was never known, but many believe they came from a Guatemalan hybrid that had already been cross-pollinated by the time Hass bought them.
- Only one seedling survived out of those seeds, and after many failed attempts to graft the seedling with branches from Fuerte avocado trees (the industry standard at the time), Hass decided to leave his little tree be… after being convinced not to cut it down in favor of his more reliable cultivars.
- When the tree began bearing odd, bumpy fruit, Hass and his family sold what they couldn’t eat to co-workers at the post office and to the Model Grocery Store in Pasadena.
- The superior flavor and high demand firmly put the Hass avocado in its place as a luxury fruit, selling for $1 each (equivalent to today’s adjusted cost of $15… can you imagine paying over $30 for a bowl of guacamole these days?!).
- Fun fact: Many grocery stores mislabel this fruit as a Haas avocado, when it’s actually Hass—named after Mr. Hass, the horticulturist who created the new strain.
- Hass patented his tree in 1935 (the first US patent ever granted for a tree) and contracted with a local grower, Harold Brokaw, to produce grafted seedlings from the cuttings of this tree. The Hass avocado grew quicker, yielded more, lasted longer, and tasted better than the Fuerte avocado, eventually becoming the Big Kahuna in the commercial avocado market by the 1970s.
- From that one mama tree that Rudolph Hass started from seed, comes every single Hass avocado tree that exists in the world today. Just imagine the first cuttings that Brokaw took, spawning generations of cuttings over the course of almost 90 years, all propagated from a single tree. How trippy is that?
- The mama tree lived on in suburbia after Hass’ death in 1952 and was cared for by Brokaw’s nephew until its own demise in 2002. The tree struggled with root fungus for more than a decade and was eventually cut down.
- Two plaques commemorate the spot where it grew near a private residence at 426 West Road in La Habra Heights, California (should you find yourself in the neighborhood and want to wow yourself with a piece of agricultural history).
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When do avocados mature on the tree?
- If you live in California and have an avocado tree in your yard, chances are it’s a Hass (though if you have a very mature tree, like I did, it could easily be one of the eight other . And chances are, it’s just dripping with fruit right about now, and you’re wondering when they’ll start to soften.
- Don’t make my mistake the first year I moved into my house, and just wait… and wait… and wait… until my avocados started dropping to the ground one by one, over-mature. And definitely don’t pick them before their prime, else you’ll just cut into a piece of rubber that even tastes like rubber (yes, I’ve tried).
- So how can you tell when an avocado is ripe on the tree? The short answer is: You can’t.
- I know, not very helpful. But wait!
- The long answer is, avocados do not ripen on trees. This goes for all varieties, but since there are over 900 of them out there (and 9 that specifically grow in California), I’ll focus on the Hass.
- Avocados are unique in that they ripen once they’re off the tree. That means that if you’re not ready to harvest them all yet, the best place to store your avocados is actually on the tree.
- The Hass variety is known for being an exceptional keeper, maturing in winter and continuing to develop its flavor through summer. (Californians are incredibly lucky to have avocados year-round because of this, and in great, cheap abundance!)
- Hass avocados start as smooth, bright green fruit. As they mature, their skin turns increasingly pebbly and purplish-black.
- The longer the fruit is left on the tree, the higher the oil content and richer the flavor it will develop. But leave it for too long, and the oil inside the avocado will turn rancid and the fruit will naturally fall from the tree (at which point it’s no longer good).
- Harvest typically begins in April and goes as late as October. The tricky part is that even among the Hass cultivar, many factors can affect the maturity rate of the fruit, including:
- Unlike other types of fruit, avocados mature throughout the year—some in spring, some in summer, while others aren’t ready until fall or winter. Different varieties of avocados mature at different rates, and if you know the strain you’re growing, the chart below can help you narrow down the timeframe of when your fruit will typically be ready to pick.
