gardening

[ahlecsys]

how can i grow avocado from seed

[jenstar]

Get your avocado stone. Don't let it dry out after you've removed it from the avocado, or it won't germinate. Take a jam jar and almost fill it with water. Stick three cocktail sticks a little way into the sides of the avocado stone at 12, 4 and 8 o'clock, so that you can suspend the stone in the water (large end downwards) with the cocktail sticks resting on the rim of the jar. Only the bottom quarter should actually be in the water. Now wait for the stone to germinate - it will probably take a week or two - topping up with water as and when necessary. Once it's germinated, it should start to sprout a good root system and a shoot with leaves. When the roots get too big for the jar, put your plant into a pot with just the top of the stone showing above the soil. This will take a couple of months. After that, you'll simply need to keep watering your plant and transferring it into a bigger pot when the need arises. After a couple of years, you'll have an impressive houseplant. It needs to grow very large before it will bear fruit, and most people just don't have to room to accommodate a fruit-bearing avocado tree. When it gets too large, you can either plant it out in your garden and hope for the best (I wouldn't recommend this in the UK as the climate is far too different to the plant's natural habitat), invest in a large greenhouse or do as a friend of mine did and donate your plant to the local botanical gardens. It took six years from seed to outgrowing the living room.