Collection: Avocado Trees for Sale

Everglades Farm grows premium grafted avocado trees in Homestead, Florida, and ships them across the United States. Every tree below fruits years sooner than a seedling would, in the variety you actually chose.

Choosing the Right Avocado Tree

Choosing the right avocado tree starts with your local climate rather than with the variety name. Cold hardiness decides the list if winter lows in your area drop below the mid twenties. Heat tolerance decides it in dry inland conditions. Humidity decides it along the Gulf and the southeast coast, where fungal pressure runs far higher than it does in California. Work out which of those three tests your site hardest and the variety list gets short quickly.

Space is the second question. A standard tree reaches 30 to 40 feet in the ground, while dwarf avocado trees hold near 8 to 12 feet and take well to container growing on a patio or in a greenhouse. If the tree is going in a pot, pick the dwarf first and the flavor second.

Fruit production is the third question, and it is where growers most often guess wrong. A Hass avocado tree gives you the flavor most people picture when they think of avocados, but Hass sets its heaviest crops in California conditions. Florida growers usually see better fruit production from the West Indian and hybrid types bred for wet summers.

Judge tree quality once the tree arrives. A healthy, vigorous tree shows firm green foliage, a clean graft union sitting above the soil line, and roots that hold the shape of the pot without circling it. Plant it where it has good air circulation from day one, because crowded still air is where most avocado disease trouble starts.

Avocado Tree Varieties

Our 47 premium grafted avocado trees cover every combination of flavor, size, and cold tolerance a home grower is likely to need. These are the groups people shop by.

Grafted vs. Non-Grafted Avocado Trees

Every avocado tree in this collection is a grafted tree, and that is the first distinction to understand. Non-grafted trees are grown from seed. They take five to ten years to fruit, they may never fruit at all, and the fruit they do produce rarely resembles the avocado the seed came from. Grafted avocado trees carry a known variety on selected rootstock, so the tree fruits in two to three years and the fruit is the variety printed on the label. A seedling is a gamble on a tree you will wait a decade to judge.

Hass and Classic Avocado Flavor

The Hass Florida Avocado Tree and the Hass California Avocado Tree both deliver the classic avocado flavor. A Hass avocado tree gives you the rich, nutty, dark-skinned avocados everyone pictures, with pebbled skin that turns nearly black as the fruit ripens. The Florida selection is grown on rootstock suited to our wet season and heavy summer rain. The California selection suits drier western gardens. Lamb Hass extends the same flavor into a later, more compact tree.

Cold Hardy Avocado Trees

A cold hardy avocado tree opens avocado growing to zones where standard varieties will not survive a normal winter. The Brogdon Avocado Tree is the one most growers start with, taking brief drops to roughly 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit while still producing thin-skinned purple fruit with excellent flavor. Winter Mexican, Mexicola Grande, and Bacon round out the cold hardy options. Browse them together in our Cold Hardy varieties collection.

Dwarf Options for Containers

Dwarf avocado trees stay manageable without giving up fruit. The Wurtz or Little Cado is the classic patio avocado, holding around 8 to 10 feet with a weeping habit. The Utuado Dwarf and the semi-dwarf Simmonds are the other dwarf options for containers, both of them reliable producers at a size you can move.

Florida Season Extenders

Growers who want fruit outside the main window build around season length. The Day Avocado Tree ripens early and holds well on the tree. The Hall Avocado Tree carries the season late into winter with large, pear-shaped green fruit. Between them sit Lula, Monroe, Choquette, and the dark-skinned Oro Negro Black Gold. Plant two or three of them and a Florida yard can pick avocados from summer through the following spring.

Indoor vs. Outdoor Growing

Avocado trees can be grown outdoors in the ground or indoors in a pot, and the two paths ask different things of you. Outdoor trees make fruit. Indoor trees make a houseplant that sometimes makes fruit. Both are worth doing, but they are not the same project.

Growing Outdoors in the Ground

Grafted avocado trees do best planted outdoors across USDA zones 9-11, which covers most of Florida, the Gulf Coast, south Texas, and coastal southern California. Avocados evolved in Mediterranean climates, so they want a dry-ish winter, a warm growing season, and soil that never stays wet. In zones 9-11 a tree in the ground will reach full mature size, fruit on a predictable schedule, and need very little from you after the first two years. Growers in zone 8 can still plant outdoors by starting with cold hardy options and giving the trunk frost protection for the first several winters.

Growing Indoors and in Containers

Indoor avocados need light, humidity, and airflow, all of which an outdoor tree gets for free. Put the pot in the brightest window in the house, ideally south facing, and expect to supplement with a grow light through winter. Dry indoor air is the usual killer, so leaves should be misted daily or the pot should sit on a humidity tray. Use a container two sizes larger than the root ball with drainage holes you can see through, and feed lightly during the growing season, since a potted tree runs through fertilizer faster than a tree in the ground but burns more easily. Container growing works far better with dwarf avocado trees than with standard ones.

What to Expect Either Way

An outdoor grafted tree sets its first fruit in two to three years, with harvest seasons that vary by variety from early summer to late winter. An indoor tree in a large pot grows more slowly, stays under 10 feet, and may fruit lightly or not at all without hand pollination and strong light. Many growers run both: a tree in the ground for homegrown avocados in volume, and a dwarf on the patio that comes inside when the forecast turns.

Planting and Climate Requirements

Avocado trees ask for three conditions and are forgiving about almost everything else: full sun, well-draining soil, and shelter from wind. Growing zones 9-11 support in-ground planting year round, zone 8 works with cold hardy options and winter protection, and anything colder should be grown in a container. Young trees tolerate light shade for their first season, but a mature tree in shade will grow and never fruit.

The best months for planting are spring and early summer, once night temperatures hold above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That gives the roots a full warm season to establish before their first winter.

1. Pick the planting location. Choose high ground with full sun and shelter from strong winds. Avocado trees have shallow root systems and a wide canopy, which makes a mature tree easy to topple in a storm. The south or east side of a building works well in exposed yards.
2. Check drainage before you dig. Fill a test hole with water. If it has not drained within a few hours, plant on a mound 12 to 18 inches high instead. Avocados fail in standing water faster than from any other cause.
3. Dig wide, not deep. Make the hole two to three times the width of the root ball and no deeper than its height. The graft union must sit above the finished soil line.
4. Backfill with native soil. Mix in coarse compost or a cactus or citrus soil mix to open up heavy ground. Skip peat and rich amendments, which hold moisture right where you do not want it.
5. Space for the mature tree. Allow 20 to 30 feet between standard trees and 10 to 12 feet between dwarfs. Crowded trees lose air circulation and pick up fungal problems.
6. Water in and mulch. Soak the planting area deeply, then mulch out to the drip line while keeping the mulch several inches clear of the trunk.

A Hass avocado tree planted this way in south Florida will typically hold its first fruit by the third season.

Avocado Tree Care

Avocado trees are low maintenance once established, and nearly every problem growers report traces back to water. Keep to well-draining soil with a pH between 6.0 and 7.0, water deeply and then let the top few inches dry before watering again, and stop guessing by pushing a finger into the soil instead of watering on a schedule. Persistent wet soil causes root rot, which is the single most common way a healthy avocado tree is lost.

Mulch is the cheapest care you can give the tree. A three inch layer of bark chips over the root zone gives you moisture retention, cooler roots, and steadier soil chemistry, and it breaks down into exactly the organic matter avocados want. Keep it off the trunk to avoid collar rot.

Avocado trees have specific nutritional requirements and are heavy feeders of nitrogen, potassium, and zinc. Use low-salt fertilizers made for avocados or citrus, because avocado roots are unusually sensitive to salt buildup and salt injury shows up as burned leaf tips before it shows up as root damage. Flush containers with clear water every few months to keep salts moving through.

Pruning is light work on an avocado. Take out dead and crossing branches to open the canopy, tip back the leader once the tree reaches the height you want to pick from, and otherwise leave it alone. Heavy pruning costs you a season of fruit.

Watch for aphids and scale on new growth, especially on trees kept indoors or under low humidity, where predators cannot reach them. Both respond to horticultural oil or insecticidal soap caught early. Inspect the undersides of leaves whenever you water, and clear fallen leaves and fruit from under the tree so pests and fungus have nowhere to overwinter.

Fruit Production and Harvesting

Grafted trees fruit years before seed-grown trees do, and that gap is the whole reason grafting exists. Each of our trees is built from a cutting from a mature avocado tree that has already proven its fruit, joined to hardy avocado rootstock chosen for Florida soil and disease pressure. A grafted tree sets its first crop in two to three years and reaches full production near year five, while seed-grown trees take five to ten.

Nearly every avocado is functionally a self-pollinating tree, so a single tree will set fruit on its own. Planting a second variety of the opposite flower type nearby still lifts yields noticeably, because avocado flowers open as female and male at different times of day.

Feeding drives fruit set more than anything else you do. Use a fertilizer made for avocados such as our 8-3-9 blend, applied twice a year. In south Florida that means February and September. Further north, shift to early spring and late summer. Young trees do better on smaller amounts fed more often.

Premature fruit drop in late spring alarms new growers, but a tree setting far more flowers than it can carry and shedding the excess is normal. Drop that continues past early summer usually points to drought stress, waterlogged roots, or a nitrogen shortage.

Harvest when the fruit reaches mature size and the skin dulls slightly, since avocados do not soften on the tree. Cut the stem rather than pulling, leave a short button attached, and ripen indoors at room temperature for three to seven days. Harvest seasons run from June through September for early varieties such as Simmonds and Day, and from November into March for late ones such as Hall and Monroe. Planting across that range gives a Florida yard nearly year-round picking.

Purchasing and Customer Experience

Buying a tree online means trusting a stranger to put a living plant in a box. We have built our online ordering around that fact. Every avocado tree ships from our Homestead nursery in its own container, with the root ball secured and the canopy braced, and orders go out on a schedule that keeps trees from sitting in a warehouse over a weekend.

Our quality guarantee covers arrival. Your tree reaches you alive and in fair condition, or we make it right. If it does not, photograph it and email csr@everglades.farm within three business days. No nursery can promise a tree is guaranteed to thrive once it is in your ground, and we do not pretend otherwise. What we control is the tree that leaves here and the condition it lands in.

Customer support runs through csr@everglades.farm and 305-704-8828. Our phone line answers around the clock, and live agents are available Monday through Friday from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm Eastern. We would rather answer a growing advice question before you order than replace a tree after you have planted it in the wrong spot.

Behind the extensive selection is a working Florida nursery, not a drop-shipper. Our growing expertise comes from grafting and field-growing these varieties in the same soil and the same wet season our customers face. That is also what fills our blog, our care guides, and our social media presence, where a real community of Florida and Gulf Coast growers trade results, ask questions, and post pictures of their first harvest. If your dream yard has a tree you can pick from in the morning, we can tell you which variety will get you there and how long your future avocados will take.

What Growers Are Saying

Everglades packed it as well as I have ever seen, as in it arrived in better condition than any time I have hauled trees in my truck bed. A month in, it is vigorously growing new foliage. It has the strongest root stock I have ever seen on a tree that size.
Andrew O. on the Brogdon Avocado Tree

I planted the tree in a bigger pot to allow growing. So far so good, it has grown a few inches and still looks healthy.
Edwin A. on the Wurtz Dwarf Avocado Tree

Trees came looking very healthy. Very securely packaged for shipping as well.
Deneen S. on the Hass Florida Avocado Tree

Those are three of the hundreds of verified reviews left on our avocado listings. Read the rest on any product page, then pick the tree that fits your yard.