John Myers
Why not plant an avocado seed instead of throwing it in the organic waste? You can’t hope for an avocado harvest – it’s not warm and sunny enough for the tropical plant here. But it grows into a pretty green plant! With us you can read how it works.
Planting avocado seeds – this is how it works!
Don’t throw away the avocado pit after you’ve made a delicious avocado cream or an avocado pomegranate salad. Instead, try planting the avocado seed and growing a pretty avocado out of it. Even if we have to rob you of an illusion right away: Your self-cultivated avocado plant will not bear any fruit. The avocado is a tropical plant, even if you give it the sunniest and warmest spot in your home, the conditions at our latitude are not good enough for avocado seed plants to bear fruit. In its tropical homeland, it takes about four years for fruit to grow on the avocado tree. To do this, the male and female flowers must open at the same time, because the avocado is a self-pollinator. That doesn’t work on your window sill. But if you plant an avocado seed, it still creates a beautiful green plant. Here we give you a step-by-step guide to planting avocado seeds.
Tip: Start your planting project with several cores, because it is likely that not all of them will germinate successfully.
Planting avocado seeds – step by step
Thoroughly wash the avocado seed so that no remains of pulp are left on it, and then dry it carefully. Then stick three or four toothpicks evenly spaced around the center of the core. Fill a glass with enough water so that when you hang it on the rim of the glass with the toothpicks, the lower half of the core is about a third covered by water. Important: the bottom of the avocado seed must be in the water! With an egg-shaped core, this can be easily identified, here the pointed side must point upwards. If the core is round, you can recognize the underside by a small bump that can be seen there.
Place the jar in a sunny, warm place where the avocado seed needs a few weeks to germinate. Patience is required! Change the water at least every two days. Eventually, the underside breaks open and a stalk, leaves, and roots gradually grow out of the core. When your avocado seedling is about 15 to 20 cm high – which will be the case after about three months – plant it in a pot. The upper part of the core remains uncovered. The plant must remain sunny and needs regular watering. Now you can watch it grow and thrive!
Plant avocado seeds and care for them properly
You can also plant the avocado seed without using toothpicks. With this method, you place the core directly in a humus-rich potting soil with clay content, whereby only the lower third may be covered with soil. Keep the soil evenly moist and keep temperatures between 22 and 25 degrees.
A firmly rooted avocado tree should be fertilized every two weeks during the summer months. For the winter, bring your avocado plant to as bright a place as possible at 10 to 15 degrees, and only water it so much that its root ball does not dry out completely. You can even put older avocado trees in a warm, sheltered place on the terrace or balcony in summer. However, you should not plant the laurel plant in the garden, because it can get too cold outside at night as early as the end of August or the beginning of September.
