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Comment by barathr | Hacker News Reader

Most folks who live in California can grow more avocados than they can possibly eat. If you don't have a tree, you should get one. I would highly recommend against any of the varieties listed in this article. Your best bet is Hass -- grown at home it's way better than what you get at the store -- or Reed. Check out your local California Rare Fruit Growers chapter for more rare varieties that do well in your area.

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Where in California are you? Will now buy a Hass tree for my backyard in Redwood City and report back. The avocados are always so bad at the stores.

I've grown and grafted Avocado trees in both Northern and Southern California. Hass, Reed, and many other good types will fruit well in Redwood City and virtually all of the Bay Area.

The only areas that can't grow Avocados are the Sierras. It's even possible to grow them in Humboldt:

https://www.epicenteravocados.com/varieties/version-2-2/

What time do they start showing flowers? I want to plant a few here in SoCal but I'm at around 3k elevation and we get an annual March snowstorm that likes to kill off any plant that start to show early.

They usually flower in Spring, whenever that is for you. It's cultivar and temperature dependent. Some varieties like Carmen will even flower multiple times a year (though Carmen isn't one of the more cold hardy types). Bonny Doon is a good cultivar to consider if you get some mild frost each year. If you go below 20 degrees, though, you'd need to protect the tree during the cold snap.

I have a friend who has an avocado tree in redwood city, squirrels eat all of his avocados before he gets a chance.

Yeah, that can be a separate issue with any fruit tree. There are a bunch of options, but it depends on how much effort you want to put in. (Though all the options are worth it compared to buying fruit from the store.)

It's definitely hard mode, we already have to have a mesh around the eggplants, tomatoes, etc and have a black walnut tree... We'll find a way :)

Stanford has avocado trees in the quad, IIRC. Redwood City should work just as well. I need to get my hands on the Gem variety due to 100+ extended summer heat in my neck of the woods. Even then, the leaves might burn without a larger shade tree nearby.

GEM isn't worth growing -- it's not that good of a fruit. Hass does just fine even in high heat. Just plant the tree in a spot that gets some afternoon shade.

Huh, avocados require tonnes of water and California has recurring droughts.

> Huh, avocados require tonnes of water and California has recurring droughts.

California has abundance of solar capacity deployed, to the point of negative prices of electricity around noon ([1]), which means more electricity is produced more than consumed. California should become serious about utilizing the wasted energy on desalination.

While it's important to do desalination responsibly without creating dead patches of the ocean from brine, it's an engineering challenge that has technical solutions, not a miracle that we can't have.

1. http://www.energyonline.com/Data/GenericData.aspx?DataId=20 (you might need to specify the date range to see a graph with negative prices around noon)

those negative power prices are doing alot for generating water from mana

> those negative power prices are doing alot for generating water from mana

I honestly fail to understand what you mean. Care to rephrase / elaborate?

For instance, it's 9:30am in California, and a lot of coastal locations show negative prices for electricity: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/prices.html

It will be like that until 2pm or so, which gives 4.5 hours to do useful stuff either for free or very cheap (as obviously, the prices will go somewhat up, if demand increases).

what's that have to do with water?

Desalination costs are dominated by energy costs. And I am making a point that California is in a perfect position to solve its water problems with the excess of solar capacity by using it to desalinate ocean water during the time of day when energy is essentially free.

Sorry for not being clear.

Yeah, desalination is perfectly aligned with solar energy availability both on a daily and annual cycle: More water needs during the day, more sun during the day. More water needs during the summer, more sun during the summer.

Are you explaining it to yourself?

Desalination plants are like many energy production facilities; they have significant ramp-up and ramp-down times. They can't just ramp up more when energy is cheap and ramp down afterwards.

I mean, I broadly agree with you that California should build more desalination plants, I just don't think the marginal price of desalinated water will be free.

Easy to water a backyard tree with a laundry to landscape greywater setup.

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