Redland Rambles

Avocado grove getting trimmed.

The avocado season is over at Bee Heaven Farm. The last of the big, plump Donnie avocados got picked weeks ago. The lull between picking fruit and and blooming season (usually around January) brings off-season maintenance. Almost every year the tree trimmer comes to cut back all the avocado trees. Call it their summertime haircut, with a little off the sides and top.

Trimming happens for practical reasons. Farmer Margie Pikarsky explained, “You don’t need a tall tree to produce fruit, and you don’t get a proportionally greater harvest just because it’s tall. Harvesting a tall tree is way more labor-intensive and requires special equipment — at minimum a tall ladder, at best a cherry picker.” Avocados are picked by hand, and Margie’s pickers either climb the tree or go up an orchard ladder, which has a tripod-like leg to keep it standing up by itself. Margie added that “a shorter tree (about 15 feet) is MUCH more hurricane resistant.”

A little off the sides.

When you have a grove of 90-some trees, you need to bring in some serious cutting power. The man who trims trees showed up early one morning with a very impressive machine. Imagine a bobcat whose operator not only drives the machine but also controls an articulated arm mounted at the top. This arm can reach up or down, swing around from side to side, or turn from horizontal to vertical. At the business end of this arm is a revolving metal piece, and three spinning circular saw blades are attached to it. Those revolving blades cut through branches smoothly and easily. The whole rig looks like something Freddy Scissorhands dreamed up.

And a little off the top.

The tree trimmer drove his cutting machine up and down the shaggy rows of the avocado grove. He maneuvered the arm to first trim the sides of the rows, and then made a final pass to level the tops. Branches fell onto the safety cage of the bobcat and onto the ground. Scraggly trees transformed into huge boxy hedges, like something you might find in a giant’s formal garden.

Sadie (under tree) and Pedro (with pitchfork) gather cut branches.

Once the tree trimmer was done, there was a mess to clean up. Pedro used a pitchfork to grab and pull out cut branches that had snagged in trees. Sadie went after branches lying underneath. They were tossed on the grass in between the rows. Then Margie came with the bush hog to chew up fallen branches and turn them into coarse mulch. (A bush hog is a tractor attachment that looks and works like a large, heavy duty mower.) Margie made a few passes up and down each row, and gestured for me to step aside, but I stood my ground, taking pictures. I quickly realized that it wasn’t a good idea for me to stand off to the side as the bush hog went by. Twice I got hit by bits of flying branches, once on the foot and once on the arm. No blood lost, just a moment of surprise. (I think Margie was trying to warn me not to lose a camera — or an eye.) Lesson learned: don’t stand too close to a working brush hog!

Margie mulches branches with the brush hog.

What looks like a severe trimming is not bad for the tree. In fact, trimming keeps trees healthy and vigorous. They will grow new branches and look less and less boxy as the months go by. “Avocados flower and fruit on new growth, so trimming after harvest is finished gives them time for a couple of new growth flushes before blooming begins, thus increasing chances of a good yield next season,” Margie explained. More new growth means more fruit and more deliciousness in summer!

After the trim.