Avocado Masterpost

I've been meaning to start a gardening blog for quite a while now! I've mostly been posting my plant photos to Instagram, but I want to be able to talk more about what I'm doing without spamming my followers. :P 

So for now I'll be putting up some Masterposts of  plants I've been growing for a while now and can show progress on. And things I can talk about! My goal here is to be a site that pops up on Google Search when someone wants to learn how to grow something. Because when I want to learn about a plant I'm growing Google has been so valuable! But I can't always find all the information I want about some rarer houseplants, like avocado or ginger or pomegranate, all of which I currently grow. 

I'll start with my avocado tree, which is now two years old (as of this month!). I apologize if this post is at all confusing or if the formatting is off. I'm still getting accustomed to blogging, and adding pictures always screws stuff up. 

 

So the first photo I have here is of a fancy setup I devised for sprouting avocado pits. I was going on vacation with my family and wanted to be able to leave the pits at home to sprout. They will sprout when left halfway in water, but as you know, water evaporates... So I made little yarn baskets and hung those from pencils balancing on styrofoam floating in water. It all looks very complicated, I know. 

You should know that I don't ever really sprout Avocado pits in the water like this. Many sources online will tell you to stick toothpicks in the sides of the pit and put it in a glass of water and then transplant it when it sprouts its leaves. I do not like this method. I prefer to plant them directly in soil, either in the pot you want to keep it in (4" to 6" diameter will be the biggest you need for starters) or in a small peat pot that will biodegrade. Just keep the soil moist. It usually takes like a month to germinate. It's easy to get impatient. 

Of the three pits above, only one sprouted successfully. The other two got moldy from too much moisture and because I never changed the water. That tree is currently in the care of my mother at home. My trees that you'll see as this post continues were already a year old when I was sprouting these pits. I really had no investment in them other than because I like to grow everything I can get my hands on. 

So starting the pit is the easy part, to be honest. It's keeping the plant alive after that that takes more of a dedicated effort. Above is a photo of one of my avocado trees (I have two). It's about a year and a half old here. However its growth is not indicative of normal avocado growth. I had pruned it heavily 6 months prior to this photo in order to coax it to branch out. As you can see, I was unsuccessful at getting it to branch. I just stunted its growth. 

Typically, avocado trees don't start branching naturally until they are at least 6 feet tall. This is impractical if you want to keep one as a houseplant. Pruning the top off does usually promote branching, but it seems I was just unlucky with this guy. 

I don't have any recent pictures of this one, but I can tell you that it lost most of its leaves from underwatering. >.<  It's still growing though, slow but steady. 

Here above is my other avocado -- the one that has been growing pretty normally. I pruned the top few leaves off when it was about two feet tall, and after a few weeks I saw these two leaf buds! He was branching! I kept him in a room with a lot of sunlight and watered him whenever the soil got dry. Not too much, not to little. Moderation is key. 

So here we have a photo with both my avocado trees! You can really see the height difference here. would you even believe they are the same age? The only real indicator is that the trunk is the same thickness. This has been an interesting observation for me. The short guy is nice and sturdy, while the tall guy is really floppy. If I don't prop him up somehow he'll eventually flop all the way to the floor! Right now he's leaning up against the armrest of my futon. 

So here they're about 1.5 years old. The little nubs in the previous photo have grown into well defined branches! My tall guy still looks a little young, not quite like a tree yet, but he'll get there. 

One day I was inspecting my tall guy for growth and a found these little buds on his trunk! I hadn't even pruned him down there. I was so pleased to find that he was branching on his own now. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop training him, but it makes my job easier. 

These were taken the same day as the photo above. Here we have three leaf buds at the end of one of his branches. I had pruned the tip off of both branches. This one sprouted like crazy, while the other one did not. 

Here you can see the overall growth pattern as well as the yarn at the base of the trunk I was using to keep him from flopping over. I didn't have any stakes with me in the dorm, so I had to be inventive. 

I took a close-up of one of the leaves to try and show the pests that have been living on him for a while now. They are called thrips and they are devil spawn. I'm not sure if the photo quality is good enough to see them on the leaf. They're little yellow crawly thingies that suck the juice out of the leaves. Thrips have been the cause of death of many plants at home. I am determined not to let them kill my baby! So I squish them whenever they appear. Unfortunately, they still haunt me and my avocado, but they are under control. They don't do enough damage to threaten the life of this guy anymore. Usually younger plants are more vulnerable. 

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This photo, taken a few weeks later, shows the new growth on the ends of the branches as well as the new branch on the trunk. See also: To the left, on the coffee table, is my young ginger plant! 

Another few weeks have passed, and you can see how much the new branches on the trunk are growing! You might also notice that it lost a few leaves since the last photo was taken. I've noticed that avocado trees go through cycles of growing, hiatus, leaf loss, and growth again. Perhaps it's somewhat seasonal, perhaps I'm just not taking care of them as well as I could. Either way, the loss of leaves does accentuate the look of the branches. 

I took this picture sitting on my futon in the living room, just looking up and admiring at the shape of my little tree. Because at this point it really was starting to look tree-like, instead of just being a little sprout thing. It went from sprout to seedling to sapling. 

I do not have any current photos of my avocado, but I will soon. When I do, I'll post an update on my tall guy. He's undergone some major changes, including more branches and more intense staking / anti-flopping measures. 

Until next time!

- Jess