Is there anything better than smashed avocado fresh off your own tree? Looking out my computer area window and all I see is an old palm that has seen better days with a china mushroom at the base of it. Time to do something about making it a better view. And what better way than with a fruit tree.
Seeing as I like avocado but don’t like paying $2.50 to $3.50 for them, what better way to use the front yard than plant an avo. The other reason for doing it was that about three months ago I had bought a couple of avos and decided to have a go at making the seeds sprout by suspending them in a jar of water.
Sprout Your Own Smashed Avocado
If you want to have a go at sprouting your own avocado seed in water, do the following
- Wash the seed from an avocado
- Stick three toothpicks in it with the pointy end up like in the picture above.
- Place it on a window sill where it will get sunshine and wait a couple of months for the root to appear at the bottom.
- Wait another couple of months for the top to appear.
Make sure you keep the bottom of the seed in water at all times. A lot of sites recommend that you change the water every five days. I changed it three times in four months and didn’t have a problem. If it starts going green give it a clean and more fresh water.
The water had been filtered through a Brita jug, that may have helped. The most important thing is to ensure that you top up the water so the seed is always submerged at least half way in water.
No Pampering Here
Seeing as the avo was starting to look like a tree, I decided to plant it. A lot of the sites recommend potting the plant and looking after it for a number of months before planting out. I decided that if it is going to become a good tree it needs a rough start. No pampering here.
I did make one concession. I decided that it would be best for the tree to be planted in the late afternoon and seeing as it was raining this arfternoon, no time like the present to get the job done.
I removed the turf, forked the ground to break it up a bit and placed some cardboardover the area. Worms love cardboard. If you place some on the ground and put some weight on it to keep it there and keep it moist worms will turn up in droves. I think they like the glue.
Ready For Planting
I placed the cardboard and emptied a wheelbarrow load of compost on top. Planted the seedling and watered it in to ensure that there was plenty of water around the root system. I will water it often in the first couple of months until it gets established.
I can imagine that it will get a fair bit of transplant shock going from a root system in water to being in soil. The compost is pretty moist though and has bulk worms in it, so I am hoping that is enough to help the avocado survive.
I will keep a keen eye on it and let you know how things progress
Smashed Avocado Update
This little seedling had a pretty hard start. After spending nearly four months suspended in water on a window sill it was transplanted to outside. No acclimitisation in between, straight from one extreme to the other.
It was out of the fat and into the fire for this seedling because we had three or four days of quite windy weather and it was getting blown all over the place. Hence the wind break.
I got out the old pole donger and knocked a couple of stakes into the ground and stapled some of the leftover insect screening from the wicking bed to the posts and solved the problem.
It seems to have worked although the leaves are a bit raggedy anne. There are new leaves and they seem to be growing larger.
The first week I was watering twice a day. I’m now back to once a day in the evening. Looks like there might be an avocado in the front yard
Smashed Avocado – Update 25January 2018
The first time I wrote about growing an avocado from a pip was 9 December 2017. I added to the post ten days later showing how it was going. This is just a couple more photos after roughly another month.
It has been pretty hot and dry here in Brisbane, it being the wet season and all. Still plenty of humidity. The watering for the avacado is now usually once a day, but sometimes it is left for a couple of days. It seems to be going well but I thought that the leaves would be a bit greener. Every now and then brown spots will appear on the leaves and sometimes the whole leaf will go brown and drop off. At other times part of the leaf will brown off then stop browning. Not sure if is me causing it by splashing or it is the weather. Time will tell.
But the good thing is that it is still pushing out more leaves and growing in height.