Best time to do is whenever the barks start to slip. The thousand calories of your bacon are still no match for the Reed avocadoes which have the highest oil content of them all. But don't worry those are very good HDL enhancing calories, entirely good for your heart. Well as long as maximum air temperature is within 60 to 90 deg F and that the minimum stays above 45 deg F, it is always a good time to cleft graft or bark graft. You don't even need the barks to be slipping if you do the cleft graft. But with bark graft, barks should be slipping. When cleft-grafting, do it on the terminal ends, near where the wood is firm but still green. To enhance take, it requires tremendous preparation which pays off with higher success rates. When collecting budwoods, ten days before, cut off the leaves of the terminal ends of the scionwood, leaving the petioles. This will make it look like you have porcupines. Then after ten days or whenever the petioles of the scionwood starts to fall off at the slightest touch (whichever comes first, the falling off or the ten days), collect the scionwood and cleft graft pronto!

You asked "Or is grafting done by taking a fruit bearing avo. scion and grafting it onto the seedling?" Short answer: Yes. Your alternate version is a waste of time.

Once you learn where the box stores purchase their fruit trees from, you realize there aren't any "generic" or no-name brands. Yes they are labeled with tags so they appear to be from the box stores, but they are likely from decent nurseries in CA and part of the distribution agreement was to allow the labeling to show the big-box name prominently and not the nursery. Most of them have the nursery name either: a) on a plastic trunk tag at soil level or just below, or b) a sticker on the outside of the container. Only once have I seen the nursery name in small-type on the main hanging label that shows the tree name and instructions. The exception are the Four Winds hanging tags that may or may not show the big box store name. The avocado's I've seen at HD/Lowes were from LaVerne and Dave Wilson nursery and were prominently shown on the main tags. But I missed looking at the last large batch that came in about a month or two ago-- which may be labeled differently as you've seen. Honestly, my local nursery is only a couple bucks more per tree than the big box (except for the 7-15 gal containers which are way overpriced). So my purchases are about 50/50 from the nursery vs. big-box (only when they were having clearances and prices were like 40% off or more). The advantage of the big box is you can take your dead tree back up to a year later. That may be a consideration for you.... HOWEVER, my local nursery is supplied from mostly the SAME places as the box stores. IMHO, I wouldn't worry too much if you buy what appears to be the "HD brand" tree if it looks good to you. Abuse it a little and take it from the container and look at the trunk and roots. If it all looks good, then I'd give it a shot. You'll probably find the nursery name eventually and can call them directly as I've done a few times. Good luck, Local Box Suppliers If some are curious about who stocks what, here is my experience from Fresno over the past year. The Walmarts here have citrus from C&M nursery (Nipomo, CA) and I haven't seen any avo's at the 3 here. Lowes was switching suppliers two years ago so I've seen mixes with Nekasa Brothers and Pacific Groves for stone fruits, and of course Four Winds on the citrus. Home Depot's are stocked with Four Winds for their young/3.4gal "true dwarf" citrus and Hines Horticulture for their "terra pot semi-dwarf citrus" which are 3 yr old C-35 trees in 5gal pots. Dave Wilson's fruit trees are scantily scattered across both HD/Lowes mostly for the stone-fruit multi-grafts and for Pluots being as they're sole source distributor in CA. At my local nursery, they stock fruit trees from Four Winds (citrus) and Dave Wilson (stone).

PJ, The pads of the nopales variety, taste great raw or cooked. How spiny is your Nopales? If its a spineless variety it should only have a few small spines (mostly located around the edges). If its not a spineless variety, I could share some pads of Nopales spineless varieties I have. What I do to remove the spines, is take a sharp knife and skin the spine bud locations off under running water. I then skin around the pad edges. I finish with a light scrub with a brush under running water. After this, I eat out of hand raw or dice up for smaller pieces to cook. The pads selected for eating should have not hardened off yet. New growth green color and a little on the tender side, is what you are looking for. The taste of pads from one of my varieties taste great, like lemony green beans.