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Avocado seeding

So I am fairly new to gardening in general. I have been doing mostly veggies in my raised beds, but I decided to try an avocado seed.

I put it in water while being suspended by toothpicks. It has cracked and I ended up getting a main taproot. A stem started but then stopped before even getting above the seed. Lost its green look and now just kind of brown. Thought it had died, bit now more roots are starting to grow along with the main root again.

Should I just continue waiting this out? Or is this kind of a lost cause? Please help a newbie out. :wink:

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applestar
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It will most likely find a way to send up another stem (or multiple stems now). It’s normal to take 3-4 weeks for the stem to start growing.

While you are growing it this way, don’t let the water level go down — water roots exposed to air will die. And make sure you have it in big enough container. Also if you have this in a sunny location, avocado stems and leaves sunburn in too much direct sun — Avocado seedlings make good fun houseplant projects because they tolerate low light conditions, although you want to give it as much bright light as you can to grow a healthy plant.

If you want to keep growing it, you will need to plant in potting mix before too long so it can grow soil-roots. But you should consider this a plant growing experiment rather than intending to harvest fruits some day. It takes years to get them to blooming stage, and even then, there are other factors. My oldest ones are over 10 years old.

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Gary350
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Your on the right tract, I use to grow avocado plants every year but not grown one in 25 years. I saved 7 seeds to plant then changed my mind & threw them all in the trash a few weeks ago. I use to start my seeds just like you did about Nov 1st once root was growing good I moved my seeds to a pots of soil. As plants grow larger I gave them small amounts of fertilizer & as them grew even larger I gave them a bit more fertilizer. My plants were usually about 18" tall by May 15, last frost was over and late freak late frost if we got one was over too so I put my plant out side on the north side of the north side of the garage so they got full shade all day. Plants are extremely sensitive to frost the smallest amount will kill them.

Applestar is right plants will sun burn you need to slowly get plants accustom to sun light. I left my plant outside in the shade for a week before letting it get small amounts of full sun. I would watch the shadows behind the garage then move my plant so it got 5 minutes of direct sunlight every morning as the sun came up. After a week I moved my plant so it got 15 minutes of full sun for a week. Once the plant started getting use to the sun I could move it so it got more & more sun, 1 hr then 2 hrs, then 4 hrs, then 8 hrs, then I planted them in the garden.

One year I put a white bed sheet on the clothes line so it toughed the ground then after the plant spent 1 week in full shade I moved plant behind the bed sheet that turned out to work great helping the plant get accustom to sun light quicker. I soon had the plant in full sun then it was planted in the garden where it had full sun all day every day.

As my plant got larger I moved it to larger pots to give roots more room to grow. Larger pots are needed outside so pots did not dry out while we were gone to work every day. Plants grow faster in full sun & a little fertilizer it was usually several feet tall pretty quick. Each year that I planted another avocado I got better at it my plants were usually 8 to 10 ft tall by Nov. Frost always kills them, then I grew more the next year. 8 of these plants make a nice shady spot to put your lawn chair the tree leafs make a 4 foot circle of shade. One year I planted avocado trees few feet apart on 3 sides of the patio wow that was nice until frost killed them.

I never grew an avocado for a house plant I can't tell you anything about how to do that.

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rainbowgardener
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They make interesting house plants and we even have one contributor that makes avocado bonsai (which most people would have said is impossible due to their large leaf size, disproportionate to a small tree) viewtopic.php?f=1&t=59416&hilit=avocado+bonsai

But unless you are young and patient, I wouldn't start an avocado seed sprouting in the hopes of growing your own avocados -- it can take ten or more years from seed before they ever produce fruit -- and that is with good luck and being able to keep it alive and thriving that long. Avocado trees may not be self-fertile, meaning you may need at least two mature trees to get any fruit and they are very large trees.

imafan26
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Most avocado are not self pollinating and they require and A and a B tree to be flowering at the same time. The fruit you get from a seedling in 7 years or so is unlikely to be the same as the parent. However, seedlings are useful for grafting a known variety. Scions from a good tree, once grafted, will bear fruit sooner. Avocado is really not a houseplant, it gets to be 50 feet tall and the roots will spread as far as it is wide.



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