Want to be amazing at growing avocados? Here’s how to do it!
Many of us dream of a lovely, well-maintained garden. With the help of some of the best Edinburgh gardeners and landscapers, you’ve got the shape and layout of your garden ready. But what really makes the garden is the plants that you grow there. While decorative plants, including flowers and shrubs, will be enough in most cases, you might be interested in going the extra mile and plant something you can eat.
Avocados are some of the most popular choices for planting, simply due to the fact that they’re so easy to grow. You can enrich your garden with cute little avocado trees that will not only make your garden look much more enticing, but also provide you with fresh avocados for whenever you need them. Here are some tips on how to be a pro at growing your avocados!
Prepare a clean pit
Before you even begin planting your avocado, you need to have something to plant. For this, you need to remove the pit from another avocado. Be careful while you do this, as you can easily damage the pit with a knife, which would prevent it from growing out. Wash it clean, leave it in the water for a few minutes if you must, and it’s ready. Whatever you do, do not remove the brown skin!
Make sure you plant it right-side up!
The avocado pit actually has an upper and bottom side. It may appear spherical, but it is actually oblong, and recognizing which side is where is crucial. The bottom is where the roots will grow out of and is a little bit flatter, while the pointier top is the part that will sprout and unlike the bottom, it needs to be kept dry.
Push some toothpicks in and put it in water
Once you’ve determined which side goes up and which goes down, it’s time to put some toothpicks inside. These are there to help you keep the avocado submerged in water while still ensuring that the tip is dry. In order to make sure this works well, make sure you pierce the seed at a downward angle.
Wait for it to sprout, then it’s time to move it to a pot
Now, you don’t submerge the avocado in water forever. It’s only going to stay there for as long as it needs to, and that’s until it starts sprouting. A good sign that your avocado is just about done with this stage is the top cracking, with the crack stretching all the way to the bottom, with roots emerging from it. Once your sprout starts growing out high and reachest about 6’’ in height, the time has come.
Make sure its needs are met and once it grows large enough – move it to your garden
What happens now is that you need to make sure that your avocado only keeps on growing. Water your avocado tree regularly, making sure to deep-soak it once in a while, but be careful that you don’t over-water it. make sure bugs don’t give your plant a hard time, and for extra toughness, you can pinch out the top leaves once the stem is 12 inches tall.
If you want your tree to grow fruit, watch out – this is important!
It might take several years for your avocados to actually grow fruit, from as little as 3 years to as long as 15. But even after the time passes, you might still see no fruit. That’s because avocados greatly rely on cross-pollination for reproduction, so in order to make sure your tree has fruit, you should actually have at least two of them, and the more you have, the better your chances.