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What's Up With This Season's Wimpy California Avocados
If you've been wandering the farmers markets this season or if you're getting a CSA delivered to your door, you've likely noticed that the Haas avocados that are available are unusually puny. Not only are they smaller than usual, but we've even had trouble ripening them this summer. It's taken over a week in a brown bag to get them anywhere near edible.
Apparently we aren't alone.
Explains NPR:
These pear-sized fruits usually weigh half a pound or more. In the summer of 2013, though, hundreds of thousands of trees in Southern California are sagging with the tiniest Hass avocados in local memory — some just the size of a golf ball...The main reason for the lemon-sized fruits, sources say, is a very unusual growing year that consisted of low winter rainfall in early 2012 (avocados spend more than a full year developing on the tree), erratic bee activity during the late spring bloom period, and lots of unseasonably cool and cloudy weather in the year since.
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Oddly enough that also means that there's more fruit on the trees. Which is good for the farmers, because the annual harvest will probably weigh in at more than usual. But it certainly does make it harder for consumers to justify paying $2 for a single fruit to spread on toast or turn into a creamy dreamy dip.
Maybe we'll just have to sip on Angel City's avocado beer instead.
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