Starting Avocados from Pits

Most of us, at some point in our elementary school education, started seeds on the window sill of our classroom. It was one of those "fun" lessons that almost always backfired on the teacher when the seeds didn't automatically sprout and grow into a magical bean stalks that rewarded us with gold coins. Damn you Super Mario Brothers.

Whether they were wrapped in wet paper towels and plopped into Ziploc baggies or pierced with toothpicks and balanced above a glass of water, we watched day after day, week after week, as they started to extend their gross little tendrils beyond their now failing husks. Of course, the avocado pits took so long to do anything that we got bored waiting and opted for kickball on the playground instead. Most of those pits ended up in the garbage can... because we were dumb kids and kickball was WAY more fun.

Here's the thing though, if second graders can do it without giving a flip about the results, you can do it to. because—hear me out on this—you're a grown up and kickball got way less fun.

The stem of the Avocado peeking through a crack in the pit.

How to grow your own Avocado tree from a pit

The rules are basically the same from when you were 8 and tried this at school.

You'll need:

• A ripe Avocado or two—Hass are great (organic is even better)
• Toothpicks
• A jar of some sort
• A windowsill on which to perch your science experiment

How to:

1. Eat the Avocado—because they're good and good for you. Make some guac, have some friends over....
2. Save the pit and wash it off.
3. The top of the pit is the slightly pointier / less flat end. Poke your toothpicks into the pit about half to a third of the way down. Evenly space the toothpicks (I usually just use 3) around the pit.
4. Fill your jar with water
5. Place the now toothpick-prickly pit on the top of the jar so that the toothpicks hold it on the jar lip.
6. You want the water to cover about half of the pit, so angle your toothpicks if you need to.
7. Put on a sunny windowsill and wait, emptying and replacing the water every once in a while.

After three-ish weeks, you'll start to see the pit crack and roots emerge. In a few more weeks the stalk will pop up through the top.

Once you see the stalk emerge, you can plant the pit in a pot filled with soilless mix. Keep it well watered.

In a couple of months you'll have something that looks like a little baby tree. When the tree reaches 12 inches, prune it back to 3-4 inches and let it start growing again.

Transplant to bigger pots with a little compost or fertilizer to help with its growth. Will you get a fruit bearing Avocado tree out of it? Who knows. It's possible, although most growers warn that the percentage is low.

Basically it can take anywhere from 3-15 years for an Avocado grown from a pit to bear fruit.

If you want to hurry it along, you can graft a scion from a fruiting tree onto your sapling, but the sapling must have a stem diameter of 1/4 to 1/2 inch. It can get all science-y wience-y, but grafting isn't hard with the right tools, and there are loads of YouTube videos that show how to do it.

3 month old Avocado trees, started from pits.