It has come to my attention that I haven’t been keeping track of my avocado plants’ growth!! Which makes me very sad because, despite my frustrations with the avocados, I have been seeing some progress from the pits I have been keeping. In this post, I’ll just keep different notes of the tweaking I’ve done during my process of growing avocados and create a separate post that tracks the progress of an avocado pit from the beginning of its journey.

Avocado pits can be harvested from a fresh avocado by cutting the avocado open, you will find the light brown, hard pit in its center that looks like any of the photos you see below. When this pit is ready to sprout, a little seedling will split it half with violent glory and out will pop your plant!

Though there are multiple methods for getting your avocado seed to sprout, the easiest by far is simply to fill up an empty glass jar with water and drop the avocado in and sit it some place sunny, whether that be in a sun-filled windowsill or outdoors on your porch. For me, it took anywhere from 4 weeks to 8 weeks to hatch these avocado pits, but they do better and sprout sooner when it is warm (hot, like southern summer hot).

There are multiple plants included in this post and I will do my best to keep them all straight to limit any confusion.

It’s been about 4 months for this little guy.

-These are all avocado pits. I brought the two in the green pots indoors about a month ago. The one in the little, black planter has been inside for about 10 days. Instead of continuing to use the toothpick method, which I find to be pretty annoying, I switched to keeping the pits in small planters and watering them several times a day to keep the soil extra moist. The idea is to keep the pits somewhat as wet as if they were still half submerged in water. You do this by burying the avocado pits so that they are only half showing, with the flat(er) side of pit facing downwards, and drowning them in water. The planters have drainage holes and were being kept outside, so there was really no need to be cautious about watering for fear of overflow.

-As the avocado begins to split, having them buried so far beneath soil could possibly make it harder for them to grow so I thin the soil around the pit to give it a little space to “spread”. Notice how the pit is sitting on top of the soil. By the time the avocado pit is splitting, there should be some roots, you can check for them by gently attempting to pull the pit out. If you feel resistance, then there are roots. If it comes right out…then your pit has more growing to do.

-If you do use the toothpick or jar method to grow your avocado pits, there is still a chance of root rot. I used the toothpick method to grow my first avocado pit and the roots turned a nasty shade of brown and became very depressing to look at, so….I cut them off.

-Don’t scream at me. It’s going to be okay. After I trimmed them, I planted the basically rootless avocado pit in a small planter with loose, well-draining soil and watered it about twice daily. This was enough to keep the little nubs from drying out, but not enough to drown it either. Remember, the soil is loose and well-draining so as long as you also have drainage holes, it should be pretty hard to drown your plant. The roots will grow back. I took a leap of faith when I trimmed the roots on my own plant and had to wait what felt like 13 lifetimes for them to come back, but they did. That plant is pictured right below…

-This is the avocado plant I transplanted into a large, self-watering planter. It is also the one that I trimmed the roots off of. They grew back! It is currently located in my bedroom, right next to a window that provides light filtered by a tree outside (through its branches). sighs I know that could not possibly be enough sunlight, but the plant has not wilted and is still growing, though not as quickly as it was when it was outside during the summer.

-This is one avocado pit from the photo above (in the green planter closest to me) on November 2, 2017. Those are leaves from a tomato plant that wasn’t doing too well. I thought I’d use them as a bit of fertilizer since another of my avocados seemed to do well with having a bit of extra “food” every few weeks.

-This little baby has been inside about a month now and I’ve seen it grow from barely being a little stub to this! I have been watering it daily. This soil is fast draining and light, there is also a bottom to this planter as it is self-watering. I try to only give it enough water to keep the soil damp to the touch, but sometimes, I go overboard. 🙂

November 10, 2017

-There is absolutely no reason for these photos (above) to be so dramatic looking, but I really liked them so I shared them anyway. These are the same two avocado plants that have been sitting on my kitchen table the past few weeks. Since I brought them inside from the unwelcoming fall weather, they have really grown.

Also November 10, 2017

-This (above in the light blue planter) is the same avocado plant from the light green planter of my “kitchen table plants”. I’ve been putting off transplanting it. This is my first time doing it without damaging any roots so I’m proud of myself. I’m very happy with it, and I should’ve transplanted a while ago. The roots were curling around the bottom. My baby looks so healthy and is getting so big! That’s water in the plate from draining. I drilled 3 holes in the bottom of the planter (and other planters that did not already come with drainage holes).