Divisi
How to grow Avocado
Persea americana · Lauraceae
Photo: B.navez · CC BY-SA 3.0
Avocado (Persea americana) is a big evergreen tree that, once settled, can bear fruit for decades — one of the highest-value crops a smallholder can grow, for fresh eating and for export. It behaves nothing like an annual field crop, and three things set it apart. First, it lives or dies on drainage: its roots are shallow and must breathe, and in ground that stays wet a root-rotting water-mould kills it with no cure. Second, it needs a partner tree: each flower opens first as female (ready to catch pollen) for a few hours, then closes and reopens the next day as male (shedding pollen), so a lone tree sets poorly — you plant two flowering types, A and B, side by side and let bees carry pollen between them. Third, you buy grafted trees — a chosen fruiting variety joined onto tough roots — that bear in 2–4 years, and you match the type to your site: Mexican (hardiest), Guatemalan (Hass is one of these), or West Indian (best on hot, low, salty ground). After planting it is steady water, careful feeding (more potassium, zinc and boron than nitrogen), and patience through one of the longest fruit-growing periods of any tree — ending in fruit that ripens only after it is picked.
Wilfredor · CC0 
Ivar Leidus · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Row spacing
- 800 cm
- Plant spacing in the row
- 800 cm
These are general figures for the crop, compiled from published agronomic references including FAO and CABI. The right choice for your field depends on your soil, rainfall and the yield you are aiming for.
Will avocado actually do well on your land? Check your field against every crop in the catalogue — free, no signup. Run the free crop check →
Other names for Avocado
avokado · avocado · avocat · abacate · avhokado · parachichi · ukwatapheya
Working in buckets, bags or paces? The farming glossary turns the measures growers actually use into kilograms and hectares — what a 20 litre bucket of each crop really weighs, and how to size a field by walking it — alongside the Shona, Swahili, Ndebele and Yoruba words used in the field. Open the glossary →
Growing avocado, stage by stage
Your avocado orchard, season by season — from choosing well-drained ground and planting matched partner trees, through the patient years of building strong trees and holding back root rot, to a long fruiting cycle and a careful harvest of fruit that only ripens once you pick it.
- Get the site right and plant partner trees
- Bring the young trees through the first years
- Build the canopy and keep root rot out
- Flowering — get a good fruit set
- Carry the fruit through a long development
- Harvest mature fruit
- Grade and cool straight away
17 step-by-step tasks in the app
Every task for avocado — what to do, when to do it and why it matters — with the amounts worked out for your own field, reminders as each one falls due, and warnings before extreme weather.
Pests and diseases that attack avocado
4 more threats tracked in the app
Divisi tells you which of these is a risk on your avocado right now, when to walk the field looking for it, and what to do the moment you find it.
Frequently asked questions
What spacing should I use for avocado?
Space avocado rows about 800 cm apart, with roughly 800 cm between plants within the row.
What pests and diseases attack avocado?
The ones covered in this guide are Algal leaf spot, Armillaria root rot, Avocado sunblotch viroid. Each has its own page explaining how to identify, scout for and control it.
Grow avocado with a plan, not a guess
Divisi turns this guide into a dated plan for your own field — what to do each week, reminders as tasks fall due, and warnings before extreme weather. Free for farmers, works offline.
Or check your field first