Avocado Ripening Tips

When you receive your avocados from us, depending on the time during Fallbrook's growing season which is December through July, it can take anywhere from 1- 2 weeks sometimes even longer to ripen if its early on in the season. As the season grows longer like May-July, the time to ripen starts getting shorter like 1 week. We do not condition our avocados unlike packing houses who then sell to grocery stores. To naturally speed up the ripening time, try putting a banana or an apple in a brown paper bag folded up with your avocados. The fruit peel naturally releases a hormone called ethylene that helps speed up the process, much like what a packing house does, but they spray a synthetic version of it on them and then the shelf life of the avocado is shortened because it ripened too fast. Our avocados will have a longer ripening time but also a longer shelf life and you can refrigerate them for about a week without it turning black like the ones from your grocery store do. If you want to delay ripening, you can put some in the refrigerator for weeks and when you want to ripen them, just take them out and the ripening will begin to take its course. We think that the flavor does change a little after refrigerating avocados fresh off the tree, but they still are very good, way better than what's in the stores.