Before 2005 I was buying avocados from Costco. In 2005 I was eating the best avocado I ever tasted, and it was large. I knew that trees grew from seeds might give poor quality fruit or no fruit at all. Still, this one was special and so good that I decided to grow it as you can see to the left.

I planted the baby tree into potting soil. It was happy and grew quickly. At least I knew it was a fast grower. When I felt it was ready for its permanent planting location, I dug a hole outside my garden window, so I could watch my baby grow.

I read about and know 1 person who planted an avocado seed and didn't see fruit for 15 years. She said one year it just started producing. Well, that would not work for me. I decided to give the tree 5 years and if it didn't produce I would cut it back and graft a known variety to it. It grew to a good size in just 4 years and it produced several avocados in the 4th year. You are wondering - were they any good! Being an unknown variety I didn't know when they were ready to pick. I picked one and it was very watery. That told me I picked it too soon, so I waited about 3 weeks and picked another. Still too watery. I waited another 3 weeks and better, but not ready yet. Well, I ran out of avocados to test and had to wait another year. Such is life!

The tree is now 5 years old and not producing a heavy crop as I had hoped, but I was comparing to grafted trees which can produce after only 2 years. Anyway, I started picking much later and discovered the flavor was outstanding, the skin was thick, but a little thinner than a Hass, the color was nice, and there were no strings inside as there is in a Fuerte. I was very pleased. Still, I needed several more years for the tree to mature and to evaluate the tree for alternate bearing, flowering characteristics, growth habits, fruit production, and tolerance to heat and cold.

It is a long boring process spending several years looking for characteristics and making notation. I noticed one year the mother tree would bear fruit on only 1 side of the tree. The next year it bore fruit on the other side of the tree. The CadwayCado™ is alternate bearing similar to over avocado varieties. The grafted CadwayCado™ trees bear fruit throughout the tree, unlike the mother tree bearing on alternate sides, which has normalized over the years. In our location the CadwayCado™ produces the same way as our 6 Hass trees - heavy production of fruit one year and very light crop the following year probably due to soil and weather.

In case you don't know, avocado seeds are grown by the thousands and grafted as seedlings with Hass. I was happy with the CadwayCado™ and grafted producing budwood to several avocado seedlings that I grew. Those trees grew much faster than the Hass trees I planted them next to. So, why did I plant the CadwayCado™ and the Hass close together? Because the CadwayCado™ is a "B" type and the Hass is an "A" type. By planting an "A" and "B" close together you greatly increase the pollination and fruit production of both varieties. One of the issues for commercial growers is pollination because avocado flowers open as female or male in the morning and then change sex in the afternoon. My research shows that "A" type are male in the morning and female in the afternoon and "B" type are female in the morning and male in the afternoon. So, putting an "A" and "B" close to each other is like a party at the playboy mansion, but having only "A" or only "B" it is like an all boys or all girls night out - fewer babies. "A" type avocado trees are typically more productive than "B" type. Hass is an "A" type. To increase production growers use a "B" type woven throughout their orchard to increase production. The problem is that most "B" type avocados are bland tasting or have other bad characteristics like strings and are not saleable. The CadwayCado™ looks similar to Hass, has a late flowering season and even tastes better than Hass, so this is a saleable avocado that can pollinate like a teenager on steroids.