How to Grow an Avocado Seed in Water/Soil Best Practice

 

Are you looking for how to grow avocado seeds in water or soil? This article is here to help. 

Growing avocado has become really popular and you guys might have seen a lot of people growing 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 if this is 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 gonna be actually finding out which method is best if growing avocados in water truly does make them grow faster and better, or if you plant them directly into the soil, do they sprout at all? Or do they outperform the ones grown in water? Who knows, we gonna find out today by experimenting with both methods.

For this experiment, we used two avocado fruits. We shall start with the toothpick and water method.

TOOTHPICK AND WATER METHOD

To start with this method, it’s best if you actually take off the outer skin of the seed immediately after slicing open the fruit otherwise it tends to break down in the water and start to mold and then it turns the water bad which can really affect the seed. 

So basically what you need to do is to run the seed under some water and peel it off. 

Some seeds are really easy to peel off and for some reason, some take a bit of time, so just persist and try to get as much off as you can.

Next up, place your toothpicks into the seed avoiding those crevices that are down the side. 

If you place your toothpicks in there, you might split your seed, so just put them to the sides.

Get a glass jar filled up with water and place your seed in it. Ensure the seed is half submerged in the water to get an optimal result.

SOIL METHOD

For the soil method, place the second avocado seed into a pot with fine potting mix, to ensure the seed is planted correctly, the flat side of the seed should be potted facing down and the pointed or rounded end of the seed facing up. 

It is easy to tell because the bottom of the seed often has kind of a base to it, hopefully, that kinda makes sense.

If you live in a colder climate you can decide to place the seeds on a heat mat just to give them a bit of warmth and hopefully get them growing 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.

AFTER 8 WEEKS

After about  2 months your avocado should have sprouted, as you can see from the image below, the avocado in the glass of water has sprouted and has an amazing root system with the roots curling all over the glass jar. It looks really cool with the top sprouting as well.

As for the avocado in the soil, we can't really tell if it has sprouted because obviously, they're in the soil. 

But if you notice your soil drying fast because of the heat pad, you can try placing a plastic container on the soil. 

The container helps retain moisture, and humidity to keep the soil relatively moisturized.

AFTER 6 WEEKS ( TOTAL OF 14 WEEKS) 

After 6 weeks, the avocado in the glass jar continued to grow really well with nice green leaves looking really good and it is definitely overdue to be transplanted into soil. 

Also, the one planted in the soil has sprouted as well, looking awesome with some nice healthy thick trunks and a few tiny leaves. 

At this point, the avocado planted in the glass jar can now be carefully transplanted into the soil.

TRANSPLANTING AVOCADO

When transplanting avocado, fill the pot with some regular potting mix. Use one hand to hold the avocado up at the center of the pot and carefully use the other hand to fill the pot with some soil mix. 

You have to be really careful when transplanting sprouted avocados because they don't like root disturbance, so just be really mindful not to break or disturb any of those roots. 

After filling the pot with soil, add a little bit of water to it. Obviously, at the moment, the plant is adapted to living in water, but you don't want to keep the soil too moist for too long. 

Water it fairly well for a few days and then start to taper back on the water. 

If you keep watering and overwatering your plant and soil for too long, it might result in root rot which is pretty common with avocados. 

So basically keep it moist for a bit and then taper back on the water until it can adapt to living in a more drier condition.

3 WEEKS LATER (4 MONTHS TOTAL)

For this update we got some interesting things happening, the avocado we transplanted from the glass jar into the soil is looking a bit sad and a bit droopy as you can see from the image below.

I guess it suffered a bit of transplant shock and it's still recovering from it. 

Meanwhile, the other avocado we planted directly in the soil has overtaken the one we transplanted. 

It is looking really nice and tall, really great, with healthy leaves on it, even though this one took much longer to sprout initially, it has grown a lot faster and a lot better than the one we started in water. 

Anyway, let's give them a little more time and see what happens next in our next update.

1 MONTH LATER (5 MONTHS TOTAL)

Now we have the final result of the avocado growth and as you can see there is quite a difference in both of them. 

From the image below we can see that the avocado grown directly in the soil are much larger and much more vigorous than the ones grown with the toothpick and water method. 

As you can see the tree is looking absolutely amazing and it's growing with a huge amount of vigor and has nice big leaves to it. 

It's really just pumping out the growth and has been ever since we saw the top sprout. 

You would have noticed that the one planted using the toothpick and water method sprouted a lot earlier than the one planted directly into the soil, but because of the transplant shock and everything, it did suffer quite a bit and was wilted for a while before it kind of perked up. So that really kind of put it on the back foot and let the other avocado planted in the soil just take over.

One thing with growing them directly in the soil is that a lot of people do end up failing because they can take a little while to sprout 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, just persist with it and make sure you keep your plant watered and don't let it dry out because once they do, they tend to start to poke their head through the surface, they just take off and grow really really fast. 

CONCLUSION

So as we have seen from the result above, the soil method does seem to work better in comparison to the toothpick and water method. 

Obviously, our sample sizes are only two, if you experimented with maybe 10 or 20 you would actually have a true answer as to which method is better. 

So as you have seen from the soil method, you don't have the disturbance that occurs when you grow them directly in water and have to transplant them back to the soil. 

So naturally, if the ones planted directly in the soil do sprout, they should grow better for you. 

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