The FASTEST Way To Grow An Avocado Tree From Seed 🥑 Easy, Quick Avocado Propagation + Care Guide 🌱

Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here my name's Claire, this is Yoli and this is special guest Teddy and in today's video we're going to be showing you the quickest, easiest, most effective way to grow your own avocado tree as well as taking you through everything you need to know about caring for it. There's quite a few methods that you can use to propagate avocados. I've literally tried so many ways over the years but the one that I'm going to talk about today is the one that's literally never failed for me, touch wood, and is ridiculously easy to do. These are just a couple of my avocado propagations. If you follow me on Instagram you'll know that I grow them pretty obsessively. I got to the point during lockdown where I actually couldn't bring myself to throw an avocado pit away so now I've got hundreds of them. I started both of these ones off about seven months ago and so yeah, they're really fast growing plants once they get going and they're just a really great way to add more houseplants to your collection for free. So all you're going to need to grow your own avocado tree is an avocado pit, some kitchen roll, and a sandwich bag. You can use a Tupperware pot if you don't have a bag but I personally always use a sandwich bag. You want to take your pit fresh out of the avocado. I know some people say you should let it dry out first. I have personally tried it both ways and honestly don't think it makes a difference so I don't bother. I'll always leave it to soak in lukewarm water for about an hour or so just to allow the brown skin on the seed to kind of soften up a bit before attempting to peel it off. Some come off really easily, others take a little bit more time but just really carefully peel all of the brown bit off until you're just left with the white pit. From here the most common method that's kind of plastered all over the internet will just tell you to stick two toothpicks into the pit and just suspend it in water. I have tried this before, in my experience it just takes way longer and it's got a much lower success rate. What I do is I just take my kitchen roll and dampen it slightly. You don't want it soaking wet so just squeeze it out a bit so it's just lightly moist. You can then go ahead and just place your avocado pit onto the kitchen roll and just really gently wrap it around it. You want to make sure that it's not too tight but that it completely covers the seed. Then simply place it into your sandwich bag and seal it up so that no air can get in or out. By doing this you're essentially creating a little greenhouse or microclimate for your seed to germinate in. To really help speed this germination process up you're going to want to leave your bag somewhere that's fairly warm. I'm not talking kind of boiling hot but somewhere where the temperature is not going to drop below about 20 degrees or so. It also helps if you can leave it somewhere fairly light. If you've got grow lights with a good balance of red lights then this is ideal for seed germination but if you don't then just natural daylight is fine. This isn't actually essential, I have left mine in kind of a pitch black airing cupboard before and still got it to root but it definitely helps to speed up the process. Now you've just got to wait a bit. Sometimes the seed can start rooting in about a week, sometimes it can take more like three or four. It does tend to happen slightly quicker if you do this during the growing season which is the spring and summer months but so long as your bag's got good heat, good light, it shouldn't make a huge amount of difference. Try not to open the bag and check on it too often just because every time you do this you're essentially disrupting the little microclimate that you've created. After a few weeks even if you don't have a fully formed root yet you'll probably notice that your seeds started to kind of split. Just keep it wrapped in the bag and wait for the root to form until it's about an inch to two inches long. When your root reaches a couple of inches long this is when you can go ahead and actually transfer it to water using what a lot of people refer to as the toothpick method. You just really carefully stick either a toothpick or sharp stick in either side of your avocado pit and suspend the root end in water. From this point once it's in water you'll usually start to notice a little sprout appear quite quickly which is the leaves of your plant but the main focus should definitely still be on growing a healthy root system just because you can't grow a healthy plant without it. You can just leave your avocado tree in water to grow more or less forever if you want to. You'll have to add some kind of hydro fertiliser to the water at some point if you choose to do this but I'll talk about that more in a minute but basically you don't have to put it up if you don't want to. I've let quite a few of mine just carry on growing in water just because I like watching the roots grow. If you do decide to pot it up in soil you should wait until the root is at least three to four inches long just because if you do it any sooner you risk sending it into shock and that will probably mean you have to start this whole process all over again. When you come to pot up your avocado tree you need to make sure that you're using a fairly loose, well draining, nutritious soil mix. I usually use a blend of normal house plant soil, perlite, orchid bark mix and limestone for these ones. These ones can be slightly susceptible to root rot so as I say making sure they have a really well draining soil is so important. You can actually add some extra grit or sand into your soil as well to help with this. When you come to potting up your plants you should make sure that the stone or pit of the avocado is actually left exposed on top of the soil and just the root system itself is planted. This is just because as I mentioned before they are extremely prone to root rot but also stone rot so to avoid the pit rotting away and killing your plant this is definitely advisable to let them have some air. When it comes to caring for your avocado tree and helping it to grow quickly and healthily the first thing you need to make sure it's receiving is really good light. The light that they receive will determine how full and bushy they grow so quite a lot of the time if you see one looking quite thin and stretched and leggy it's usually because it's not receiving enough light. Avocado trees are native to Mexico so require a minimum of about six to eight hours of light a day in order to thrive. They can cope with small amounts of direct sunlight but on the whole should be kept in bright indirect lighting conditions just because too much direct sun can cause their leaves to burn. They're also perfectly capable of surviving under grow lights if your house doesn't receive that much natural light. I actually made a beginner's guide to grow lights video recently so I will link that above. Assuming you're growing your avocado tree in soil they only like to be watered when the top few inches of soil are completely dry. I can usually tell just by looking at my plant when it's ready for a drink because its leaves all droop and curl slightly. As I've already mentioned they're really quite prone to issues from over watering so if you're not quite sure whether or not your plant's ready for water I would definitely advise leaving it a day or two and then coming back. They're really drought tolerant plants as well so you're very unlikely to cause any issues if you miss a day here or there. Fertilizing your plant over the spring and summer months is a really really important thing to do especially if you're growing your avocado tree in water just because it helps to allow them to absorb all the nutrients, minerals, all the good stuff they need in order to support full healthy growth. Avocado trees really benefit from a high balance of nitrogen in the soil so this is really important to take into consideration when you're looking for a fertilizer. You can also make your own fertilizers. I've made a video about DIY natural fertilizers that you can make at home so I will link that above. Temperature wise they're fairly adaptable plants but they do enjoy a steady temperature meaning that it's not fluctuating about too much of ideally between about 16 and 30 degrees celsius. Like lots of house plants these ones really don't enjoy cold drafts so just make sure that you don't place them right next to an air vent or a drafty door or a drafty window as they won't be happy about that. When it comes to humidity again these ones are fairly flexible but they'll always appreciate higher levels of humidity. The recommended humidity level for these ones is about 45 to 65 percent but as I say if you do crank it up a bit they will only thank you for it. I run a humidifier pretty much constantly in my house just because I've got so many humidity loving tropical plants but there are some cheaper methods such as pebble trays and stuff like that you can also use to raise the humidity. If your avocado tree isn't looking as full and bushy as you'd like then by pruning off some of the smaller leaves, the smaller growth, it can actually help your plant to focus its energy more into the bigger more mature growth. If you do decide to do this make sure you use a clean sharp pair of scissors and also make sure you leave enough leaves on the plant for it to still be able to absorb light. You can also chop off the top section of the plant from the stem like I've done on this one just because again it helps it focus its energy on the fuller bushier growth at the bottom. I really hope you found this video useful. If anyone's got any questions or anything like that then let me know in the comments below and I will do my best to help. If you enjoyed this video please make sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel and I will see you in the next video.