cold hardy avocadoes

[philip]

I have been interested in growing avocadoes for a long time now.
Last year i planted out two young avocadoes that got completely destroyed during the winter.
A friend of mine planted the same ones and his are still alive. He lives in a more sheltered spot close by.
The best avocado variety in terms of cold-hardiness that i can seem to get so far is Mexicola.
It can apparently withstand up to -6 degrees Celsius.
I found a woman here in brittany who has a mature avocado tree growing outside in front of her house.
She gets a lot of delicious fruit from it. It was grown from a shop-bought fruit and lookes to be a Hass seedling.
I have one plant growing of a seed from her tree.

Amazing work was and is been done in america in terms of developing new more cold-hardy avocado varieties.
Unfortunately these remain impossible to obtain for us here in europe.
I have read that new cultivars can now survive up to - 12 degrees Celsius.
I am looking and hoping to find someone from america one day who would be willing to source and send me seeds
of these new cold-hardy varieties.

[darrenabbey]

I have no idea as to how to source such seeds, but I am very interested in the idea of a more cold-hardy avocado. I'm living in Minnesota, so it would probably be quite some time before I could grow one out back.

[philip]

This is how my precious little avocado tree looks like now. It was grown from seed of a local tree growing outdoors but in a warmer part of the region.

As you can see it suffered a good bit of damage but it grew so much better and two other small plants i had that both died.

I am going to have to try my best to protect it through the first  2-3 winters and then its either grow and cope or die.

The amazing thing is that the mother tree fruits profusely even though this is quite a cool climate.

I am quite convinced now it should be possible to grow avocadoes further north in coastal climates such as Oregon for example.

It is sprouting back up from the base which is very good. This coming winter plastic water gallons will be placed around it along with a protective hay mulch and frost vlies.

[philip]

I planted the avocado out now. It has lots of shoots coming up and growing on the stem.

I am going to have to protect it well this winter to give it a good start. I remember a piece of information about a fig tree that grew in germany and froze back to the ground every winter for 5 or 6 years. Then it stopped dying back in winter and became a big tree. It managed to adapt to the cold.

This is kind of what i am hoping for. If figs can do it, maybe avocadoes can, too!?

The two avocadoes i planted out last winter actually survived and are sprouting back again.

This is amazing because they looked dead as dead can be, but then again it was a very mild winter.