I used to buy two or three bags of avocados every single time I hit Costco. Guac on taco night, avocado toast every single morning, green cubes on my kids' plates at every meal. If you ask me my favorite berry, I'll say "avocado" without blinking.

That's right. I said berry.

I know, you're probably wondering if I flunked third-grade produce class or if one too many servings of avocado toast has finally scrambled my millennial brain. But botanically speaking, avocados qualify as berries: they develop from a single ovary and have fleshy tissue surrounding the seed. Unlike a peach or cherry, that giant "pit" isn't surrounded by a hard stone. So alongside blueberries—and, weirdly enough, bananas and tomatoes—avocado gets berry status.

Fun fact aside, I genuinely just love eating avocado. That creamy, fatty, almost neutral flavor makes it a blank canvas for whatever you pair it with, while the texture alone can completely elevate a dish. Sometimes I don't dress it up at all. Sliced avocado with a little sea salt is one of my favorite snacks, full stop.

And as a busy mom, I'm not mad about the nutritional benefits either. My kids will happily eat avocado in ways they'd never touch salmon, so mashed into a smoothie, spread on toast, or mixed into scrambled eggs, it's an easy way to get some healthy fat into them.

If you love avocados as much as I do, though, there's an even better option than loading your Costco cart every week:

You can grow your own—and with a little planning, you can harvest them for much of the year.

From Costco Bags to Backyard Trees

When I bought my farm, planting avocado trees was near the top of my list, right up there with figuring out where the chickens were going to live.

I started with two: a Choquette and a Super Hass.

That was just the beginning.

I now have around 20 avocado trees scattered across the property. Once they're all mature, my family is basically guaranteed to be eating organic, homegrown avocados almost year-round—no Costco run required.

But you absolutely do not need 20 avocado trees to benefit from the same strategy.

Whether you have room for two trees, five trees, or an entire backyard grove, the varieties you choose can make a huge difference in how long your harvest lasts.

Before I understood that, though, I fell down the classic avocado rabbit hole: Type A versus Type B flowers.

If you've researched avocados at all, you've probably run into this too. Avocado flowers have a strange, almost theatrical mating dance. Type A flowers typically open as female first and later reopen as male, while Type B flowers follow the opposite schedule. Planting complementary flower types can improve opportunities for cross-pollination and, depending on the variety and growing conditions, may improve fruit set.

I spent real time worrying about getting the "right" combination.

Then I looked around my own neighborhood and realized something: half my neighbors already have avocado trees. I'm growing in South Florida, surrounded by other flowering avocado trees and plenty of pollinator activity.

More importantly, I eventually realized that for the goal I actually had—stretching my avocado harvest across as much of the year as possible—flower type wasn't the only variable I should have been obsessing over.

There was another question I should have been asking.  And if you're planning your own avocado trees, it's one worth asking too.

My original Choquette tree.  It's so heavily loaded with fruit that the lower branches are touching the ground. 

The Question That Changes Your Avocado Harvest

What actually determines whether you're eating homegrown avocados in June or in January is ripening season—and that's a factor many home growers never think to plan around.

Here's the part that changed everything for me:

Avocado varieties do not all ripen at the same time. Not even close.

Some varieties are ready as early as June. Others don't reach their harvest window until deep into winter.

That means you don't have to choose an avocado tree based only on flavor, fruit size, cold tolerance, or whether it's a Type A or Type B.

You can also ask: When will this tree give me fruit—and what will be ripening before and after it?

Choose your varieties deliberately, and you can string together a harvest that runs from early summer clear through February.

Here's what that looks like using twelve of the avocado varieties currently growing at my farm:

• Simmonds — An early-season favorite, ripening June through September, with a reputation as one of Florida's classic early avocados.
• Mexicola — A small, cold-hardy Mexican-type avocado with a rich, nutty flavor, ripening July through September.
• Russell — A distinctive long-necked avocado with elongated fruit and mild flavor, ripening July through September.
• Day — A relatively compact tree that bears young and produces creamy fruit that's excellent for guacamole, ripening July through October.
• Brogden — Known for cold hardiness and its thin, edible skin, ripening July through October.
• Super Hass — One of my original two trees, a Type A variety with Guatemalan and Mexican heritage and Hass-like fruit, ripening October through December.
• Utuado — A compact-growing tree with excellent creamy fruit, ripening October through December.
• Nishikawa — A Hawaiian variety with rich, high-oil flesh and larger Hass-like fruit, ripening November through December.
• Monroe — A highly productive, consistent cultivar with good cold tolerance, ripening November through January.
• Oro Negro — "Black gold" in Spanish, prized for its rich, buttery, high-oil flesh, ripening November through January.
• Choquette — My other original tree, a Guatemalan-West Indian hybrid known for large fruit and excellent eating quality, ripening November through February.
• Winter Mexican — One of the more cold-hardy avocado varieties, helping close out the calendar with a December through February harvest.

Build Your Harvest Calendar

Put those windows next to one another, and the strategy becomes much easier to see:

Variety	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb
Simmonds	●	●	●	●
Mexicola		●	●	●
Russell		●	●	●
Day		●	●	●	●
Brogden		●	●	●	●
Super Hass					●	●	●
Utuado					●	●	●
Nishikawa						●	●
Monroe						●	●	●
Oro Negro						●	●	●
Choquette						●	●	●	●
Winter Mexican							●	●	●

Now imagine applying that same idea to your own yard.

Maybe you already have a November-through-January avocado. Instead of buying another variety that ripens during exactly the same window, you might deliberately choose an early-season variety next.

Or maybe your current avocado crop disappears by October. A Choquette, Monroe, Oro Negro, or another later-season cultivar could help extend your harvest farther into winter.

The goal isn't necessarily to own more avocado trees. It's to make the trees you choose work together.

That's how even a relatively small backyard collection can start producing fruit across a surprisingly long stretch of the calendar.

The Trick That Makes This Work: Avocados Don't Ripen on the Tree

There's another detail that makes this strategy especially forgiving, and it surprises almost everyone the first time they hear it:

Avocados don't ripen while they're still on the tree.

They mature there, but the softening we associate with a ripe avocado happens after the fruit is picked.

That quirk means the tree itself can function as an incredible storage system.

Within a particular variety's harvest window, you don't necessarily have to pick the entire crop at once and suddenly find yourself staring at a kitchen counter covered in 47 avocados all racing toward guacamole at the exact same time.

You can often leave mature fruit hanging and harvest it gradually as you need it.

How long fruit can remain on the tree varies by cultivar and conditions, so we're not talking about indefinite storage. Eventually fruit quality declines or the fruit drops.

But for a home grower, that extended picking window means less waste, more flexibility, and a harvest you can spread out instead of dealing with all at once.

Combine that with varieties that mature at different times of year, and suddenly your avocado season gets very, very long.

A week's worth of Super Hass avocados from my tree.  I'll let the rest hang on the tree and continue to harvest as needed. 

How to Plan Your Own Avocado Calendar

If I were planting my farm's avocado trees again from scratch, I wouldn't spend nearly as much energy trying to engineer the perfect A-and-B flower combination. 'd still pay attention to flower type. 

But I'd also ask one very important question: When does this variety ripen?

That's the question I want you to ask when you're choosing your next avocado tree, too.

Start with what you already have.  When does it ripen? Then look for the gaps in your calendar.

If your existing tree gives you fruit in July and August, consider choosing something that carries you into fall or winter. If everything you grow ripens in November, look for an early-season variety instead of adding another tree that produces at the same time.

You can still consider flavor, mature size, cold tolerance, flower type, and all the other things that make one avocado variety different from another.  You're just adding harvest timing to the decision.

Choose varieties with overlapping-but-different harvest windows, and before long you can have something that feels a lot like your own personal avocado subscription service—except the delivery driver is a tree in your backyard.

That's exactly how two avocado trees somehow turned into twenty at my house.

But you don't need that many avocado trees.  A handful of thoughtfully chosen trees can give you a remarkably long harvest right in your own backyard. 

Ready to Build Your Avocado Calendar?

Start by looking at the avocado trees you're already growing and when they produce. Then find the gaps in your harvest.

Use our Avocado Variety Comparison Chart to compare 28 avocado varieties by characteristics including ripening season, flower type, fruit size, cold tolerance and more.

Once you know what your avocado calendar is missing, shop our avocado tree collection to find the varieties that can help fill those gaps.

From a couple of Costco bags a week to a backyard that provides nearly year round—that's the kind of glow-up this berry deserves.