Can You Grow an Avocado Tree From the Pit?

Have you ever wondered if you can grow an avocado tree from the pit? The short answer is: yes. The longer answer is: yes, but…

The truth is, growing an avocado tree from the pit is not as simple as it seems. Just stick a few toothpicks in the pit and you’ll be eating your very own avocados in no time? Not only does an avocado tree need years to grow, but there are many other factors that determine whether you’ll end up with a tasty avocado or not.

If you want to grow an avocado tree to harvest your very own avocados, you’ll need to learn a little more about the anatomy of an avocado tree. If you just want to see if you can make an avocado pit sprout, you can do that too! Whatever your goal, this article is for you.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema

The anatomy of an avocado tree

Avocado trees are a subtropical species of evergreen tree producing the prized green fruit that we’ve come to know and love. Avocados are creamy in texture and delicious on toast, in smoothies, or as a side to a main course. But how do you go from an avocado pit (the seed) to a tree that produces fruit?

Let’s start with a brief overview of the avocado tree:

Avocado trees can have a long lifespan of at least 100 years or more. However, most trees in production today are not nearly that old. The avocado boom of the last few decades has resulted in more recent expansion of avocado orchards, primarily in Mexico and Southern California.

The avocado industry’s expansion, while good for our health and the economy, is unfortunately fraught with issues such as deforestation and water shortages. While it’s important to be aware of this complicated reality, these issues are not the focus of this article.

The avocado tree is unique because it’s not frost-tolerant, and it’s not self-pollinating. As a result, avocado trees are mainly grown in regions with mild winters and little to no risk of freezing temperatures.

Sometimes, avocado orchards can be grown elsewhere around the continent in protected microclimates. Additionally, a handful of varieties have been known to be more frost-tolerant than others. Still, you’re unlikely to see a healthy avocado orchard in Pennsylvania.

The other factor that makes avocado trees unique, and the factor that makes cultivating them a little more challenging, is their unusual flowering behavior. An avocado tree can have one of two flowering type:

Type A: flowers open in the morning as functionally female, then close and reopen the next afternoon as functionally male.

Type B: flowers open in the afternoon as functionally female, then close and reopen in the morning as functionally male.

Evolutionarily speaking, this trait is designed to increase genetic variety. But what does this mean for the avocado grower? Not only do you have to know what type of flowering behavior your avocado tree presents, but you have to plant it in a grove with trees of the opposite type to ensure pollination.

Why commercial avocado trees are all grafted

Now that you have a better understanding of the avocado tree’s life cycle and anatomy, it should be clear to you why commercial avocado trees are grafted. 

Grafting is the process of joining a cutting from a mature avocado tree onto the stem of a sapling grown from seed. The partners continue to grow as one, ultimately resulting in fruit identical to the tree from which the cutting originated.

Commercial growers plant grafted trees because avocado trees are not true to seed. Avocado trees grown to maturity from seed can grow fruit, but there’s no guarantee that the resulting fruit will bear any likeness to its parent. Commercial growers don’t want to risk the uncertain fruit quality, not to mention there’s no way of knowing whether the tree is type A or B until it starts flowering.

Finally, grafted trees can start producing fruit faster than a tree grown all the way from seed. The faster an avocado grower can start harvesting fruit from her trees, the faster she can make money.

How long does it take for an avocado tree to fruit?

So how long does it take for an avocado tree to start flowering and producing fruit? The truth is, there’s no one right answer. Avocado trees don’t all mature at the same exact rate.

An avocado tree grown from seed can take anywhere from 4 years to 13 years or more to start flowering and producing fruit. Whether fruit results, of course, is a matter of whether the flowers were pollinated properly. Having other avocado trees around, especially of the opposite type, can increase the rate of cross-pollination.

A grafted avocado tree, however, can start fruiting within as little as a few years from grafting. That’s because the grafted tree has less work to do to reach maturity than a tree grown from seed. You can buy grafted avocado trees from your local nursery, or even try it yourself by grafting a cutting from a mature avocado tree onto a sapling grown from seed.

The benefits of growing your own avocado trees

You might be asking yourself whether it’s even worth trying to grow your own avocado tree if the fruit can take years to materialize without any guarantee of quality. However, there are still numerous benefits to growing your own avocado trees at home.

First, it’s a great experiment to try at home. You can test out different propagation methods, use different sized pits, even experiment with grafting. Growing plants at home is a great way to feel connected to nature, especially for those of us living in urban environments. If you have kids, teaching them to grow their own plants is an invaluable lesson.

Second, growing your own avocado trees can result in amazing avocados. Depending on where you live, you can plant your avocado trees in the ground and keep nurturing them until they start flowering, which can take anywhere from 4 to 13 years.

Growing avocado trees from seed until they start fruiting may take a long time, but it can be really rewarding. Especially if you’ve been able to grow multiple trees from seed, you might end up with a variety of interesting fruit, which could even be better than the original! In the end, it’s an experiment in genetics.

If your main goal is to harvest avocados at home as soon as possible, then you might consider buying grafted avocado trees from a nursery, or experiment with grafting your own. Even if you go this route, there’s no reason you can’t experiment with growing a few from seed, just to see.

Ultimately, there’s no one right way to grow avocado trees for the home grower. You can even decide to keep them in pots as house plants, or try your hand at avocado bonsai.

Can I grow avocados where I live?

Before you plant an avocado tree outdoors, it’s important to ask yourself: can I grow an avocado tree in my climate?

If you live in a climate that experiences freezing temperatures during the winter, even if just for a few days out of the year, you won’t be growing an avocado orchard in your backyard. Unfortunately, avocado trees are sensitive to frost, and even just one night of freezing temperatures can cause the tree to die.

If freezing temperatures are an anomaly in your area, you can take certain measures to prevent damage to an outdoor avocado tree such as wrapping the trunk in blankets or other insulating material. Ultimately, however, avocado trees are best grown in mild or subtropical climates.

That said, you can grow an avocado tree anywhere indoors as a houseplant. Keep in mind, avocado trees grown this way will remain smaller and won’t produce fruit.

How to get an avocado pit to sprout: three reliable methods

Now that you know all about avocado trees, it’s time to try growing your home! Getting an avocado pit to sprout and turn into an avocado sapling is surprisingly simple. Here are three methods that work almost all of the time:

The “stick and poke” method aka the toothpick method

Perhaps the most popular method of sprouting an avocado pit is the toothpick method. You take a clean, uncut avocado pit and poke three to four toothpicks in the middle, then place it suspended over a glass of water.

Only allow the water to come up the pit about halfway. Submerging the entire pit can result in it rotting before it even has a chance to sprout.

As with the other avocado pit sprouting methods, sprouting time will vary. You can expect it to take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for the pit to split and a root to start emerging.

Once a root appears, keep the pit over water and allow it to keep growing, or transplant into a pot with soil.

Photo by Martin Jurekcz

The wet paper towel method

A less known method of getting avocado pits to sprout is simply wrapping them in a moist paper towel, putting them in a plastic bag, and forgetting about them for a month or even two. This is a great method if you’re trying to sprout multiple pits without taking up too much space in your home.

When roots have started growing, transfer each pit to its own container of soil.

The soil method

Lastly, why get fancy if you don’t have to? Sometimes the simplest method is the most reliable.

To sprout an avocado pit in soil, simply place the pit into a container of soil, add water, and wait. To prevent the soil from drying out, you can invert a plastic bottle to create a mini greenhouse effect. You won’t be able to see the root develop unlike with the other two methods, so you just have to wait until the sprout pushes its way through the soil.

Which method is best?

Each of the three methods for sprouting an avocado pit described above work most of the time. However, there are a few differences to be aware of.

Personally, I’ve had mixed results with the toothpick method. Of the three, it’s certainly the most popular method in the media: it looks fun, it’s a great way to introduce kids to growing your own food, and it works. However, it also tends to be the slowest of the three methods, as the sapling can get stunted or experience transplant shock when it’s finally moved to soil.

The second method works surprisingly well, and takes up very little space in your home. Just look at this young avocado tree, whose pit I wrapped in a moist paper towel just a few months ago:

The third method, sprouting an avocado pit in soil, also works reliably well. The drawback of this method is that you have to constantly monitor soil moisture and make sure that it doesn’t dry out, even if you’re waiting months for the pit to sprout. You can reduce the likelihood of this happening by mimicking a greenhouse effect with an inverted bottle or covering your pot with some plastic wrap.

The biggest benefit of sprouting your avocado pit directly in the soil is that the young tree doesn’t have to undergo transplant shock. An avocado sprout’s roots are fragile, and if you’re not careful you can easily break or damage them!

That said, all three methods work and can result in beautiful little avocado trees. For best results, experiment with all three methods!

Did you know that avocado trees don’t grow true to seed? Have you ever tried sprouting an avocado pit? Let us know what you think below!