Two Easy Ways to Start Avocado Trees From Seed
Yes, you can grow your own avocado tree from seed. Next time you make avocado toast, instead of throwing the pit in the trash, try growing your own avocado plant. Anyone can do it. Here’s how!
Did you know that the seed or pit of an avocado can be sprouted? It’s a fun activity! Keep in mind: This method does not produce the fruit (that requires pollination!); the result is an interesting and attractive houseplant.
Start with a ripe avocado from the store. (Any type will do.) Be sure you don’t cut into the pit with your knife; just gently remove it. Eat the delicious, nutritious flesh! Wash the pit off with water and allow it to dry for 2 to 3 days.
Read Next
Credit: FootstepLog/Shutterstock
Avocado pits (aka, seeds) may be started in a glass of water or a loose soil mixture. Either will work, but the soil method will provide faster results and will be easier to eventually transplant.
Starting Avocado From Seed in Water
- Insert three toothpicks into the side of the seed around the pit’s equator (or middle), equidistant apart and about ½-inch deep. The pointed end of the pit should face up and the fatter, flatter end down.
- Fill a small glass with room temperature water to the brim and rest the toothpicks on the brim of the glass, with the flat end of the avocado seed immersed in the water and the pointy end out of the water so it remains dry.
- Put the glass in a warm location with indirect sunlight (not direct).
- Change the water in the suspended container regularly. Be sure to keep the bottom half of the seed immersed in the water at all times. Your seed should start to develop roots and sprout in about 8 weeks.
- In 4 to 6 weeks, your seed will have roots! The roots are usually the first to emerge from the seed—and will appear from the flat end in a few weeks. Then you’ll see a sprout or stem! Look for signs of a small shoot at the pointed end. Tiny leaves will develop and grow on this shoot.
- Optional: As leaves begin to appear, you may want to gently pinch off the leaves (and discard) to encourage the avocado plant to grow a stronger stem and well-established root system before it focuses on leaves.
- Once the roots are at least 3 inches long, transfer the avocado seed to an 8-inch terracotta or clay pot that has drainage holes. Fill the pot with sandy potting soil (a cactus soil can work). Plant the seed in the middle of the spot and make sure that the pointed end is facing up! The top of the seed should be level with the soil surface but not cover the stem. Water thoroughly. Place near a bright window.
Credit: NeginMinaee/Shutterstock
Starting Avocado From Seed in Soil
The soil method generally produces faster results. Fill a large container with a porous soil such as a houseplant potting mix or cactus mix (not regular soil!).
- Position the seed in the center of the pot, placing the seed so that the pointed end sticks out about an inch above the soil surface.
- After potting, water thoroughly.
- Put the plant near a sunny window; it should receive bright, indirect light.
- Keep the soil moist at all times until the avocado plant is established!
Photo Credit: Followtheflow/Shutterstock.
How to Care for an Avocado Plant
- Keep the soil slightly moist at all times, but not soaking wet. (Yellow leaves and a soft stem are signs of too much water. If leaves fall off, soil is too dry.)
- When the plant is about a foot high, cut it back to 6 inches so that new shoots will sprout.
- Keep plants near a bright window.
- Avocado plants should be fertilized every month with a standard houseplant fertilizer.
- Your tree can live outside in the summer. Bring it indoors if winter temperatures go below 45°F (7°C).
Avocado plants grow rapidly. They often have to be discarded because they’ve become too large for indoors!
Credit: O. Oleksyuk/Shutterstock
Make an Avocado Shake
So, what are you doing with the avocado fruit? Here’s a great idea. This is a popular treat in Brazil. Let us know if you like it!
Ingredients:
½ avocado, peeled and pitted
1½ cups milk
½ cup ice
3 tablespoons sugar
Put the ingredients into a blender. Process the mixture on high for about 1 minute. Pour it into a glass and enjoy! Makes 1 serving.
Fun Avocado Facts
- Avocados are also called alligator pears! Why? Avocados have rough, green skin like alligators and are shaped like pears. The fruit has such a smooth, creamy texture that they were once eaten only by royalty.
- The avocado tree originated in south-central Mexico, sometime between 7000 and 5000 B.C. Archaeologists in Peru discovered avocado seeds buried with Incan mummies that date from 750 B.C. The tree itself is an evergreen. It can grow 30 to 80 feet tall.
- The oldest known living avocado tree is on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. It was planted in 1879.
- The avocado is a berry! An avocado pit (its seed) makes up 10 to 25 percent of the fruit’s weight. One avocado tree can produce as many as 500 avocados (or 200 pounds of fruit) per year. An average harvest from one tree is about 150 avocados (60 pounds).
- Guacamole may be the first thing that comes to mind, but avocados are used in all sorts of ways. For food, avocados are great in salads, sushi, soup, candy, avocado toast—even in ice cream in Brazil! If you’re not sure that you like avocados, make sure they feel firm to the touch and not mushy. Try eating first in slices or pieces, not as smashed guacamole.
- Avocados aren’t just eaten as food! Avocado oil is used in sunscreens, skin moisturizers, hair conditioners, and makeup.
Now you know more about avocados! Tell us if you like avocados and how you use them.
ADVERTISEMENT
I have started pits suspended over water and had great success with all of them. My current windowsill isn't big enough to ha e multiple things in it so I began germinating the pits by soaking them in water for a day or two, then wrap them in a damp paper towel and place them in a snack size ziplock and place in a sunny window. Mine is East facing. I have yet to have one that didn't sprout! They germinated much faster using this method.
It takes forever to get an avocado to grow roots in water! I bury my kitchen scraps in my raised beds all winter and every summer I find an avocado tree growing there! I have found it is much easier to get a sprout if you plant the seed in a flower pot that already has a plant growing in it and continue caring for the plant you already have so as not to overwater or do anything special to get the avocado to sprout. You can repot it in its own pot when it gets several inches tall (it may still have the seed ball attached so be careful to not injure it). :) Enjoy your tree!!!
Easy to make Chocolate Avocado Pudding is delicious.
Frozen or fresh Avocados
Cocoa powder
Sweetener or sugar of your choice
If you like cold chocolate pudding use frozen avocados. If you like room temperature pudding use fresh avos.
Combine in a Vitamix blender.
You decide on how much chocolate and how sweet.
It is a perfect pudding texture and a wonderful way to make chocolate pudding. It tastes like the best chocolate pudding from childhood minus all the harmful ingredients found in a box mix.
BTW, I had to stop composting avos because they sprout very easily in my British Columbia garden. I wish I could grow them into a tree!
I've planted a pit directly in the soil, leaving the top third above ground because the pits need light to germinate. I've done this several times, with a high success rate, resulting in lots of give-ways :-) One summer I even put a few pits out in the garden, assuming I could pot them up before winter if anything grew. Weeks later I was rewarded with a stalk shooting up. In only a couple of days, it reached at least 2 feet before the first leaves spread out. It thrived outside for another couple months - I finally dug it up when we got frost warnings. And found another one of the pits had a long, sturdy root, and its stalk was just about to break the pit open. Both of those plants have a happy life in a sunny hallway in an office building.
I've also tried the toothpicks and water method and I did have success once but also had a couple failures. It's fun for kids to watch how a seed grows but the soil version seems more effective if you want a plant.
I currently have 3 pot-sprouted plants sharing a pot. Not ideal, but so far they are doing well (3 to 4 feet tall!). In my experience drainage is critical - they don't mind being watered from the bottom occasionally, but they really don't like having constantly wet feet.
Most avacodos are grafted hybrids, very rare that a tree grown from a seed will produce a tree that sets decent fruit id any at all....
I don't understand why people keep saying those plants will never grow up to be a fruit bearing tree, my neighbors all have avocado trees, enormous with so many avocados that they have to give them away. all these trees grew from seeds.
Thank you.. I always say, "Try it!" Then we really know! You really know! Your friends have done it. 🥰 Urban legends can create doubt. I plant tomato seeds from a fresh tomato and grew tasty tomato bearing plants. The myth was my plants might be different than the seeds, but they were just as tasty and divine. Try it.. Make growing plants an experiment! HAVE FUN! 💞
I've tried this method multiple times and never had any luck. Finally, I threw a pit in pot of topsoil and got a sprout on the first try.
I’ve been germinating and growing avocado pits with my son lately for “science” class. I have a planted avocado that’s growing pretty steadily it’s about a foot tall now. It has six big leaves.
When you say cut it back, do you mean just chop off the top? I didn’t know this step.
Is there a particular way or angle you’re supposed to cut at?
Hi, Amber. You should cut about 4 to 6 inches off from the top.
Comments