The BEST Way To Grow Avocado From Seed | 0 - 5 Months of Growth
Intro
You can see the results. It's pretty clear that one method is better than the other. Growing avocados has become really popular and you guys like me may have seen a lot of people grow these in the same method, which is basically taking the seed and placing three toothpicks into the seed and submerging it in a glass of water. I've grown avocados in this way before and had some really good results, but I have always wondered is this really the best way to be growing avocados? It's certainly not a natural way of growing them or a way that would just happen out in the wild where avocados come from. So today we're going to be actually finding out which method is best if growing avocados in water truly does make them sprout faster and grow better. Or if you plant them directly in the soil, do they sprout at all? Do they outperform the ones grown in water? Who knows. We're gonna find out today. so let's just get right into the video. Go and plant these things and see what happens. Okay, so I'm gonna use four avocados.
Removing the seeds
I've got two of the Hass variety and two reed avocados. The red ones are much larger, so open those up and get the seeds out of them. As you can see, the reed avocado has a much larger seed really quite massive compared to the Hass avocado.
Toothpick & Water Method
So we'll start with the toothpick and water method. So to start off with with this method, it's best if you actually take off the very outer skin of the seed. otherwise it tends to start to break down in the water and start to mold and then it turns the water bad and it can just affect the seed. So basically I just run this under some water and peel it off. Some seeds are really easy to peel off and for some reason some others take a bit of time so just persist and try and get as much off as you can.
Next up, we're just going to place our toothpicks into the seed, just avoiding those crevices that are down the side of the seed. If you place your toothpick in that you might split your seed. so just put them to the sides. [Music] So I've got two glass jars filled up with water and I'm just going to place them in here so the seed is half submerged in the water. [Music] So as for the other two seeds, we've got one Hess and one reed avocado left.
Soil sowing method
We're going to be placing those seeds into their own individual pot of soil. The soil here is just some fine potting mix and I'm just making sure that I plant it the right way up. basically to tell you just want the flat side of the seed facing down and the more pointed or rounded end facing up. It is kind of easy to tell because the bottom of the seed often has kind of a a base to it. Hopefully that kind of makes sense because it's winter at the moment.
I am going to place these seeds on a heat mat just to give them a bit of warmth and hopefully get them going a bit faster. Avocados do tend to do quite well. if you give them some warmth, they will germinate a bit better and a bit quicker.
8 Weeks Later
[music] All right you guys! So it's been two months and this reed avocado has sprouted and it's got an amazing root system on it. You can see it's curling all the way around in there. It looks really, really cool and this top is sprouting on it as well. As for the other seeds, the other one in water isn't growing at all and then the ones in soil. I don't know if they're sprouting roots or anything. It's hard to tell because obviously they're in soil, but I have just put the plastic containers over the top basically because the soil was drying out really fast because of the heat pad. So the containers just help retain the moisture and the humidity in the soil. But yeah, I'll check back in once we have some more results and see which ones start to sprout next.
14 weeks - Octopus roots
[Music] All right. So the reed avocado has continued to grow really well. It's got nice green leaves on it. It's looking really good and is definitely overdue to be transplanted into soil, so we'll do that today. The house avocado in water has started to sprout as well. It's got a little root coming out, so glad to see that one's going well. As for the ones in soil, the reed avocado has sprouted and it's looking awesome. It's got a nice healthy thick trunk and the hasse avocado. Nothing there yet that I can see. So yeah, not too sure what's happening, but we'll see if that one starts to sprout as well eventually. But let's move on to transplanting this one into some soil. So I've just filled the bottom of this pot with some regular potting mix and I'm just going to hold the avocado up here and carefully place soil around it and you just want to be really careful when you transplant avocados. They don't like root disturbance, so just be really, really careful not to break or disturb any of those roots.
Now, I do just want to give this some water. Obviously at the moment, this plant is adapted to living in water, but you don't want to keep the soil too moist for too long. Basically, I'm just going to water it fairly well for a few days and then start to taper back on the water. If you keep watering and over watering your plant and soil, you might cause root rot, which is pretty common with avocados. So basically keep it moist for a bit and then tape it back on the water until it can adapt to living in more drier conditions.
Turn of the tables
Okay, so for this update, we've got some interesting stuff happening. The avocado that we transplanted last time is looking a bit sad, a bit droopy. as you can see here, I guess he's just suffered a bit of transplant shock and is still recovering from that. But meanwhile, the other reed avocado has overtaken this one. It's looking really nice and tall. Really great healthy leaves on it. And yeah, so even though this one took a lot longer to sprout initially, it has grown a lot faster and a lot better than the one that we started in water. As for the hass avocados, the one in water is pretty much the same as last time. It hasn't got much bigger. maybe the taproot's a little longer, but no more development than that. And the one in the pot that wasn't sprouted last time has sprouted. As you can see, it started to grow. So super stoked about that. and again, this one, you know, wasn't showing anything. It may have been growing under the ground for some time, but it has already overtaken this other one here, so I thought we'd try something a little bit different with this avocado and actually transplant it today.
Transplanting from water to soil
So rather than waiting until it has leaves like the other plant, hopefully this will mean that it doesn't have as much transplant shock, but I guess time will tell. We'll see later on in the next update if it's more successful than the other one or not. Hopefully it doesn't kind of slow it down too much, but we'll see what happens. But anyway, we'll check up again in one final update to see what the results are and which method ended up being best.
Final results
All right you guys! So we have the final results of the avocado growing and as you can see, there's quite a difference in the trees on either side of me. So these are the trees that were grown directly in soil and they're much larger, much more vigorous than the ones grown in the water and toothpick method. As you can see, this tree is looking absolutely amazing. It's growing with a huge amount of vigor and it has nice big leaves to it. It's really just pumping out the growth and it has been ever since we saw the top sprout. You guys would have noticed earlier that this one sprouted a lot earlier than this one, but because of the transplant shock and everything, this tree did suffer quite a bit and was wilted for a while before it kind of perked back up and so that really kind of put it on the back foot and let this one just take over.
The thing is with growing them directly in soil is a lot of people do end up failing because they can take a little while to show the top and although a lot might be happening under the ground with the roots, you may not know about it and you may start to neglect your tree. So if you do want to grow them in soil, do just persist with it. Make sure you keep your plant watered and don't kind of let it dry out because once they do start to poke their head through the surface, they just take off and they grow really, really fast.
As for this one here, you can see he's looking nice and healthy and this is a Hass avocado compared to the other Hass avocado and this is obviously the one that was grown with the toothpick method. and as you can see, a lot shorter but still really nice and healthy. And this one was transplanted before he had his top growing. Just when he had his roots, it seems to be growing well. it hasn't really slowed down too much, but yeah, a little bit of a difference there. This one may end up catching up to the one grown just directly in soil, but time will tell that. But yeah, I'm just stoked to see some kind of clear results that this method does seem to work better. Obviously our sample size is only four, so if you did this with maybe 100, you would actually have a true answer as to which method is better. But as you can see with this method, you don't have the disturbance that you need when you grow them directly in water and then have to transplant them. So naturally if these ones do sprout, they should grow really well for you anyway.
I hope you found this video helpful and if you have, make sure you give the video a thumbs up and hopefully this has inspired you to have a go at growing your own little avocado tree.
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And even if you do decide to grow an avocado with the toothpicks in the water, it is a lot of fun and I do recommend you know having a go with it anyway instead of just throwing the pit away. If this is the way that's going to work for you, then do it. It's a cool way to see that whole seed just come to life and shoot the roots out and then start growing in the top. You know it is a really cool way to do it. If you want a tree that's hopefully going to grow with more vigor than perhaps this is the method for you. It's really up to personal preference, but let me know down in the comments what you guys are going to try and what your results are. I'd be really keen to find out. If you haven't already, please subscribe down below and I look forward to seeing you in one of my other experiments or one of my other growing videos.
Alright guys, thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next time.
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