Avocado is a fruit plant tree. Growing avocado was first originated from Mexico. Its fruit is green colored, egg shaped, contain a single large seed. Still, Mexico is the largest avocado producing country. According to 2016 reports, 5.6 million tonnes of avocado were produced worldwide.
It is among the healthiest fruit having large quantity of healthy fat nutrition. They also contain large amount of potassium even greater than bananas.
Growing Avocado indoor from Seeds
Tropical climate is good to grow avocado. Its tree need hot and humid weather conditions. Although, frost is not good but these can survive at -1 °C.
Avocado seed
You need to wash the avocado seeds and remove the fruit layer completely. But don’t damage the seed layer. These seeds are often called pits.
Avocado pits have two ends. Bottom end is for growing roots and top end is for growing plant. There are small indications of pit top and bottom side. Before planting pit, you must need to know the sides.
Growing avocado indoors is little time consuming and busy process. But you need to do this for better gardening.
Get three toothpicks and fix them with pit from center, and that top side must remain on the top. Must see the image for better understanding. And now get a small water glass and put that pit on it, that bottom side must remain in water and top side outside the water. Now you must have understand the trick of toothpicks. We have used these to only provide water to bottom side of the pit which grow roots.
Caring the pits
Take it in sunny room and change the water as required. Its good to change the water after week or so.
After this process, you need patience. It will take 7 to 8 weeks to take out the sprout on the top. Roots will also appear from bottom with large size.
When the sprout grows up-to 7 inches, then cut it down to 3 inches and wait to grow again. That will grow strong roots and stem. After 2nd time when is grows to 7 inches, then its the time to plant the baby plant in soil.
Rich Soil
We need rich soil which is dark in color because its already containing compost and mulch. Take small pots and put that soil in them.
Planting in Pots
Remove the toothpicks and plant that baby plant with pit in the pot. A little percent of top side of pit must remain outside of soil. Place that pot somewhere in the sunny location. Sunny environment is good for growing avocado.
Watering and cutting leaves
Give proper water and when plant grows 12 inches tall, cut 2 or 3 leaves from the top. This will not let the plant to be extra tall.
After few months, make a proper place to plant that tree indoor. In summer, they can manage outdoor in sunny environment.
Pollination
You need to grow more than one tree to get pollinate from one another. These plant self pollinate with wind. Tropical areas have little to strong wind, but you need little wind to pollinate the trees. A strong wind can damage them.
Its complicated to say, when these plants will grow the fruit. But in many cases, they take 4 years. In some cases, when they do not get proper care, grow fruit after 10 years.
See also: “Why is pollination important“
Harvesting and Ripening
Avocado fruit does not ripe on the tree. These are same like bananas. We need to harvest the fruit and then process them to ripened for usage. In most cases, many fruits fall down and after few days they ripened automatically.