By ccodez
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31/03/2023

print font size How to grow an avocado from a seed?

Choose a fruit that is soft and flexible

The attempt to grow an avocado starts logically in the store. It is not possible to choose a properly ripe fruit with the naked eye - it can have a different color from yellowish-green to brown-purple to almost black with a purplish tinge. Help yourself by feeling: The ripe fruit is slightly soft and flexible.

Large berries with a stone inside are very diverse not only in color and the structure of the skin, but also in shape: from almost spherical to oval to very elongated pear-shaped. Their length varies from seven to almost twenty centimeters and weight from seventy grams to two kilograms.

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How to sprout an avocado?

Carefully cut the ripe fruit lengthwise without damaging the seed. Free it from the pulp and clean it from its remains, preferably with a paper towel. Prepare either a moist but permeable substrate or perlite if you want to try growing avocados hydroponically. Store the avocado with the tip up to a depth of no more than two and a half centimeters.

All you have to do is keep the substrate moist and never let it dry out. Put the pot somewhere warm, where the temperature is around twenty-five degrees Celsius, then the germination is quite fast and without any problems.

Exotic types of fruit: What can you grow at home?

Warm and moisture, the basis of success

The most important thing for growing is the appropriate temperature and sufficient air humidity. These conditions are best maintained in a heated greenhouse, but you can create favorable conditions for the plant to grow in an apartment as well. Room temperature in winter and wintering outside in summer are sufficient for this. It is important that the young plants are not in direct sunlight and that they always have a moist but not soaked substrate.

It is best to water the plant with rain or at least standing water from the top of the pot, but above all, do not let the water stand in the bowl. This could cause root rot followed by leaf drop and death. Avocado also reacts to drought with leaf fall; if you figure it out in time, just cut them and start watering normally again. The plant will usually bloom again soon.

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Avocado from the stone only bears fruit after 4 years

If grown correctly, the trees can bear fruit, even when grown at home in a flower pot. They usually become fertile between four and eight years of age. Although there may be a problem with their pollination, even unpollinated flowers can produce elongated seedless fruits that are similar to cucumbers thanks to parthenocarpy.

Parthenocarpy is a relatively rare feature of some plants that are able to produce fruit without first being pollinated. In addition to avocados, some fig trees, for example, are endowed with this property.

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The sweet pear tree is a tree from the New World

While here we can only grow avocado in a pot, in its homeland it is avocado or sweet pear tree (Persea americana) tree up to fifteen meters high. It is one of the oldest cultural plants cultivated by humans - according to findings in the graves of members of Native American cultures, we know for sure that the Indians of Central and South America knew it already eight thousand years ago.

The genus Persea from the laurel family (Lauraceae) includes at least fifty (but rather more than a hundred) species growing mainly in the tropical and subtropical parts of Central and South America. The most famous of them is Persea americana, whose more than eight hundred cultivated varieties give rise to a whole range of diverse-looking avocado fruits exported all over the world.