Progress Report: Growing Avocados From the Pit

In addition to several other vegetable window growing experiments we have going on, we've been trying our hands at growing avocado trees from their pits. Today we wanted to give a full update on how they've been coming along.

Here's how we're looking right about now. You might recall we started trying to sprout these avocado pits last November and over the past 9 months have had luck getting them to sprout roots, stems and leaves.

Last we checked in, almost 4 months ago, the stems of the avocado pits had shot up and begun to sprout leaves. At this point, we tried what's called "pinching them out" in order to promote multiple stem growth in a more horizontal or bushy direction.

The stems stayed cut off and seeminly dormant like this for several weeks (maybe three) before new stems began shooting straight up from where they had previously been cut. They did not form 2 stems and we realized we should have "cut" the stem right above to new leaves rather than where we did. Here's a good shot showing where the new stems just re-grew themselves from where we previously cut them:

Here's what they looked like at the end of May, when they began growing new leaves from the new stems:

Just as the stems sprouted new leaves, we cut them again right above the 2 new leaves, hoping this might do the trick, however, these new cuts also stayed as they were for about 2-3 weeks before sprouting new stems vertically up and out — still no luck on double bushy stems.

We've since just let the plants grow as they want to before trying any more cutting. They've grown large green leaves and seem to be doing well. You can see more of the various places we've tried cutting them in this shot:

At one point the leaves on one of the plants began to brown and dry out:

So we snipped these off the plant and changed the water before anything spread further — it's continued to grow and sprout new leaves just fine.

All in all, we've really just let these guys hang out in the same environment over the past 9 months, continuing to water and watch their progress. We're so ready to transfer them over to potted planters and think this will really help them along.

We've come across several planters we like, but many of them do not have a hole in the bottom for drainage. We think we could drill holes, but we'd love to ask those of you more experienced gardeners out there: what do you do with planters that don't have the drainage hole — use rocks in the bottom?

Oh and you may have noticed, we started a third plant from a new pit a few months back, which has already caught up to and grown taller than the original two!

We'll keep you posted on the progress of these guys — we can say we are thrilled we haven't killed them yet!

* Keep up with our Full Avocado growing Experiment *

Our other window vegetable growing experiments:

• Regrowing Celery from the base
• Regrowing Bok Choy from the base
• How to grow sweet potatoes from scraps
• Regrow green onions indefinitely