Our Avocado Tree: Winter Update

As promised in yesterday's winter garden update, today we wanted to give a little winter progress report on the state of our avocado tree we've been growing from the pit. We haven't given an update on this guy since early fall back when we planted it in a soil filled-container, so we're more than overdue.

That being said, we don't have too much progress to actually report — above is what we're looking like today, which isn't too different from where we last checked in here:

Back in September (when the above photo was taken), we had finally planted our growing avocado plant in a planter with soil and have been watering it generously ever since with hopes of seeing it spring up tall and wide.

Alas, the plant hasn't really changed much at all.

Basil doesn't mind though...

While we are thrilled it's actually stayed alive, we'd hoped to have seen at least a little more substantial growth at this point. We've tried things like rotating it around the house in front of different windows (the bathroom, the back room, the front room, etc) but have found it seems to do well for right now on the floor in front of the same kitchen windowsill it's been used to. We're also trying to get the stem to grow more vertically, towards the light, by placing it underneath the window like this.


At one point while in a different location, we noticed this slight browning on the tip of one of the leaves — putting it back in front of the window has seemed to help with this:

Here's another shot with me holding the plant to show scale:

We're not too worried about the slow growth since this same plant basically had a dormant growth period for a few months this same time last year before shooting up a crazy tall stem with leaves in early spring. So, we're hopeful that we'll see one of those growth spurts again this spring and summer within this little container.

Plus, we are much further along from where we first began with just the pits:

So that's how we're looking on the avocado front! This has definitely been one of the slowest growing projects we've ever taken on, but it's also been a rewarding experience and a fun house plant.

We still have the second stem hanging out in water with the other windowsill plants:

Hopefully we'll get this guy planted at some point soon too.

Have you been growing avocados or other house plants? Do they also have a slower growth period during the winter months like ours?

- + Keep up with our Full Avocado growing Experiment + -

P.S. Can you beleive how well our celery plant keeps growing back, even after we completely trimmed it down? It's the plant that keeps on giving!