How I grew Avocado Pits into plants

This was a long time coming. I wanted to do this for years. To be honest it wasn't until about 2 years ago that I even liked Avocado's. However my wife always loved them and so we would always have some on hand.

Being the un-official gardener of my family I obviously wanted to grow my own Avocado plants for a long time and never got around to it. Well I finally took the plunge and started to grow them from the pits.

The general rule of thumb is that you clean the pit very well with water and a towel and then suspend the pit in water so the bottom is submerged and the top is dry. There are various ways to do it but I went with the toothpicks and mason jar route.

I started this little guy in a tiny mason jar because well I was short on space. I quickly got a second pit started as well right next to it.

After a few weeks the pit would crack down both sides (hopefully not where I put a toothpick). Then a few weeks after that a root would appear and start growing down.

I am still not sure what that nasty brown gunk is. It will fall right off if you touch it and I am thinking it some kind of algae or something similar because it is not connected to the root system but basically is just there. It was gross so when I changed the water I would knock a lot of it off.

Then after a few weeks I started to see the stem appear. Once the stem appeared I felt like it was all worth it.

It was at this point that I realized I never took off the brown outer shell of the pit. It dries out really quick and is just there. So the next time I changed the water I carefully peeled it off so it wouldn't fall off into the water and rot. And soon after my stem was getting pretty tall.

Now this next part is controversial. On one website I read that after the stem gets 12 inches tall you need to cut it back to 6 inches to promote more root growth and yadda yadda. But I learned a few things from doing that.

1) It takes forever for the new offshoot to grow and made me super nervous that I just killed my plant

2) the off shoot grows out the side and not just straight up and I feel like that will hurt the plant over time when it gets bigger

3) It looks stupid

So on my other ones I will not be cutting the stem back.

The root system on the first pit I grew is crazy and has a lot of offshoots and actually more than 1 main root. It started to grow a 2nd main root which you can see in the picture above on the bottom right (the little root).

It is not fairly tall and with big leaves. It loves the sun and the south facing windowsill it has been sitting in. But with all things change is inevitable. Today is the today we plant it in soil and start our next journey.

Growing plants hydroponically (in water) is easier in my opinion because you can always clearly see when you need to add water. You can see the roots and if there is any issues with them. It's easier in water. However in soil you can never really know if the soil conditions are perfect. Does it need more water? Am I overwatering it? Does it have enough nutrients in the soil or should I add fertilizer? Is the soil consistency right or is it not draining well?

There are a million things that can go wrong. And now that it is going to be in soil that means I can take it out during the day and give it that 100% pure sunlight Avocado plants love. But outside and soil = bugs. So that is not going to be fun.

Before we transplant our first Avocado pit let's take one last look at my baby that has been with me for months over my kitchen sink...

I need a pot that can handle the root system but also have room to grow. However I don't want an insane pot because you can always put your plant into a bigger pot but you can't downgrade in size. So with that in mind I gave this pot a go.

It is an 8 inch plastic pot with drain holes on the bottom. I had to squish some roots to make it fit because the jar I had it growing it allowed the roots to grow down too far.

Here is the final product!

Will it ever grow fruit? Most likely not ever. But that doesn't mean it isn't a pretty little tree :). I plan to keep it dwarfed of sorts so that it doesn't get out of hand and will be easy to move but also big enough so that it could support fruit down the line!

Thanks for reading and have a great day 😁😎

-TPL out!