This Mexico and Central Africa native tree shares the same plant family (Lauraceae) with cinnamon, bay laurel and camphor. It is most popular because of its delicious green skinned fruit which has fleshy body and a single seed in the center. Avocados are rich in several B vitamins and vitamin K, with good content of vitamin C, vitamin E and potassium. They also contain phytosterols and carotenoids, such as lutein and zeaxanthin. Many studies has shown that Avocados are beneficial for lowering cholesterol. So it is obvious that this fruit should be frequently present on your table.
You won’t believe how easy and fun it is to grow your own avocado tree from the pit of a fruit. All you need is to learn the technique to make that hard stone at the center at the fruit sprout. However, this doesn’t mean you will soon have your own avocado fruits to harvest – your tree might start producing fruits after 7-15 years. But you will still get a pretty nice houseplant or a new tree for your garden. Who knows, with proper care you might be making guacamole with avocados from your own tree. Now lets learn how to grow an avocado tree from a pit…
The Method
What you need to do is to remove the pit from an avocado fruit. Now rinse it well and dry it as you don’t want it to be slippery. Have in mind that the broad part of the pit is considered to be the bottom while the pointed part the top. Get 3-4 toothpicks and insert them into the widest part of the pit, about halfway to it. Suspend the pit over a glass/jar of water with the pointed part up. Make sure the water covers about an inch of the seed. Place the glass/jar in a spot with good light, but not in direct light. The water should be warm and the level should be maintained. In 2-3 weeks the seed will crack and after 1-2 weeks a single root will appear. In the next 1-3 weeks a stem will start growing. Your avocado tree is ready to plant when the root is around 2-3 inches long and the stem is at least 1-2 inches. Once it is planted, the stem will continue to grow. You will notice different sets of leaves developing. As the tree grows, prune the top branches so it becomes bushier.
Avocado as House Plant
If you want to keep your avocado as a house plant cut it back to about 3 inches when the stem is 6-7 inches long, this will encourage new growth. When it hits 6-7 inches again, pot it up in a rich humus soil in an 8-10″ diameter pot, leaving the top half of the seed exposed. Place on a sunny windowsill. Avocados love sun – the more sun the better.
Frequent watering and occasional soaking is a must in order to have a healthy plant.
Avocado Tree in Your Garden
If you like to plant it in your garden do it in summer, but have in mind that if you live anywhere where it gets cooler than 45 degrees F, you’ll need to bring them back indoors in the fall/winter, before the temperatures fall.
If you are lucky enough, your tree might produce fruits after 3-4 years, although it will more likely take 15 years for the first fruits.
Healthy gardening, which leads you to healthy and beautiful, plants and flowers acquires a homemade compost, all natural and inexpensive. Compost is organic matter that has been decomposed and recycled as a fertilizer and soil amendment. Compost is rich in nutrients. It is used in gardens, landscaping, horticulture, and agriculture.
The compost itself is beneficial for the land in many ways, including as a soil conditioner, a fertilizer, addition of vital humus or humic acids, and as a natural pesticide for soil. Composting organisms require four equally important ingredients to work effectively: Carbon — for energy; the microbial oxidation of carbon produces the heat, if included at suggested levels, high carbon materials tend to be brown and dry, nitrogen — to grow and reproduce more organisms to oxidize the carbon, oxygen — for oxidizing the carbon, the decomposition process and water — in the right amounts to maintain activity without causing anaerobic conditions. You can buy compost in every gardening store, but as always, the best is to make in by yourselves. Home composting is a natural process that can convert garden and most kitchen waste into a material that can be used as a soil improver, garden mulch, or to top up flower and patio pots. Using grass clippings, kitchen scraps, dry leaves, and all types of natural things from your home like coffee grounds, you can create “black gold” for your garden beds. Compost has amazing nutrients in it which helps your garden soil be the perfect place for microbes to interact with root hairs. In other words, by adding compost, you are building stronger roots and the results are healthy and delicious fruits or veggie or stunning flowers. You can also add compost to the soil in new gardens and also use it as a top dressing to smother weeds around healthy plants. It has many way to make your own compost but we will show you the easiest and the cheapest once, or how to use kitchen waste and leaves to add nutrients in the soil in your garden.
Benefits of Composting
Compost improves the quality of almost any soil, and for this reason it is most often considered a soil conditioner. Compost improves the structure and texture of the soil enabling it to better retain nutrients, moisture, and air for the betterment of plants. It encourages the growth of earthworms and other macro-organisms, whose tunneling makes room for water and air.
Compost Tea
Compost tea is easily made by soaking or steeping compost in water. The resulting compost tea is used for either a foliar application (sprayed on the leaves) or applied to the soil. It is an old fashioned way of providing liquid fertilizer for plants. Similar to manure tea, compost tea gives your plants a good dose of nutrients. Compost tea works especially well for providing nutrients to new transplants and young seedlings. All you need to do for making a compost tea is to fill a burlap sack or an old pillow case with finished compost and secure the open end. Place in a tub, barrel, or watering can filled with water. Agitate for a few minutes and then let it steep for a few days. Water will leach out nutrients from the compost and the mixture will take on the color of tea. Spray or pour compost tea on and around plants. You can use the bag of compost for several batches. Afterwards, simply empty the bag’s contents onto the garden.
Use Kitchen Waste for Worm Composting
Composting your kitchen food waste is easy and requires little time, effort or space, depending on which system you use. It is very good to make compost from your kitchen waste because is a complete and natural food for the soil, helping to improve its structure, water-retaining abilities and overall health. You can imitate nature in your own yard by composting your kitchen waste with the help of the worms. Worm composting is small enough to keep on a balcony, patio or in a porch, so it’s ideal if you don’t have much outside space. It’s also one of the cleanest, neatest and easiest composting systems to use. A ready-made kit provides both the bin with its lid and the worms. As you fill each layer with small amounts of scraps and leftovers, the worms work their way up through the layers, eating the waste (they consume up to half of their body weight a day). It’s this action that speeds up the composting process, leaving you with rich, dark compost in the lowest tray after only a few months.
What to Use from the Waste?
You have to be careful while making the homemade compost. Not all of the waste is beneficial for the soil. The Best Waste for Worm Composting are raw or cooked fruit and vegetable peelings, pasta, rice and bread, dried and crushed egg shells, teabags and coffee grounds and dry fiber, such as torn-up egg crates and empty toilet rolls, to make up 25 percent of the contents. Avoid citrus fruit and onion peelings (which cause acidic conditions), plant seeds, meat, fish, dairy products, dog and cat droppings, spent tissues, grass cuttings and leaves, diseased plant material and anything in excess.
Use Fertilizers
For better soil and fertilizers in your homemade compost. Additional nutrient sources are especially important when using soil mixtures that don’t contain compost. Choose natural fertilizers derived from mined minerals, animal byproducts, plant materials or manures. A combination of these natural fertilizers provides a long-term, stable and eco-friendly source of nutrients. Such a blend can include combinations of any of the following: alfalfa meal, blood meal, bone meal, cottonseed meal, crab meal, feather meal, fish meal, greensand, kelp meal, dehydrated manures and rock phosphate.
Composting leaves
It take 4 to 6 months to compost but still is easy and cheap way for a homemade composting. All you need to do is make a pile of leaves and place it wherever drainage is adequate; a shaded area will help keep the pile from drying out. The leaf pile should be at least 4′ in diameter and 3′ in height. Include a layer of dirt between each foot of leaves. The pile should be damp enough that when a sample taken from the interior is squeezed by hand, a few drops of moisture will appear. The pile should not be packed too tightly. Leaf compost is best used as an organic soil amendment and conditioner; it is not normally used as a fertilizer because it is low in nutrients.
