Growing Avocados (Persea americana) as Houseplants

It's one year to the day since I started this one. I wondered about rehoming it to the preschool but I have another avocado pit drying and I think I will give them the fun of watching it grow. It is fun and the avocado pit is so big you can clearly see what is happening as it sprouts.

Avocados make nice houseplants when you have the right conditions for them. It all sounds pretty easy. They like lots of sun and moist but not wet soil. Just let the surface dry out slightly between waterings and fertilize them every couple of months. They might need a stake to hold them up in the pot and you can easily prune them.

This is the third one I have started and I
have to tell you the story of my others.
Use it as a caution.

I started the last one when I was living in an apartment. I used toothpicks to suspend the pit over water with about an inch of its base in the water and I placed it in front of the sliding glass door to my eastward facing balcony. It sprouted and grew beautifully until the autumn of that year. That's when it took a turn for the worse. The leaves slowly started browning and dropping until it was a stick, but a stick covered with buds that looked like they would erupt into leaves at any moment. Then it sat like that for months in a state somewhere between life and death, refusing to go either way. It was frustrating. That's when I discovered a slight draft near the door. I moved the pot one foot (roughly 30 cm) and the leaves sprouted - and then it died! I didn't mention that the balcony was covered and our days our shorter in winter so I figured out that lack of light was part of the problem. And a little research indicated they don't like breeze because it reduces humidity. Live and learn - put it in a bright spot with no drafts. My current one sits on the floor in a south-southwest exposure.

My first one was a 5' (1.52 metres) tree that I chopped down to fit in the car as I headed off to college. It quickly grew back to 3' (slightly less than a metre). Later, sharing a house with others and then moving around on co-op work terms, I left it with my roommates one semester. This is how I discovered its frightening drama Queen personality. One weekend, I returned to see it lying flat as though it had fainted. The soil was bone dry and I quickly added water. Within an hour it was clearly bouncing back and it returned to normal as though nothing had happened. Some plants wouldn't, so at least it has that going for it, and watch who you choose to babysit it. The entire time I had it, it was lovely with none of the brown dying tips you often read about.

Now, if I haven't frightened you off, start an avocado pit.

The conventional way is to stick 4 toothpicks into it to suspend it over water with the base, the flat side, sticking in the water about an inch. The first link in the reference section mentions taking a slice off of the top and bottom first. This isn't necessary but you can experiment. What made me decide to start my last one was finding a huge pit in an avocado and I just couldn't resist. In fact, it was so big that it fit in a hyacinth glass so that is what I used. It was so convenient whereas most avocado pits would fall through. I'm wondering what kind of avocado it was because the leaves on this one are huge too.

Normally, you plant the pit in soil when the root is about 2-3 inches (5-7.5 cm) long. Having the hyacinth glass allowed me to watch the roots develop for awhile longer. In the photo below you can see that the roots are long and have developed nodules on them. These are called adventitious roots. They are normal but they're an indication the roots are looking for air. This is the day I potted it last year.

Here it is in the pot. Just take care when transplanting the bare rooted pit so the plant doesn't go into shock.

Avocados, also known as avocado pears, are a valuable commercial plant for their fruit (technically, a berry) but don't expect to harvest any indoors. It is likely they have been cultivated in Central and South America from as early as 5,000 BC.

References

How to grow avocados as houseplants
Growing Avocados In Containers and Indoor Avocado Plant Care
Avocado - Wikipedia

Images

All photos from the iPad of @kansuze.

@kansuze