🥑 How to Plant an Avocado Tree Grown from a Pit

Hello and welcome to HealthyHouseplants.com! Today, we’re going to talk about what to do with an avocado tree that you’ve grown from a pit.

Usually, you can keep the tree in water for about a year, but at some point, it’s going to start to struggle, as has happened with this one. I’m going to cut off a couple of the leaves that aren’t doing so well because it’s been sitting in the water for a while. It will be fine; just cut the leaves off. That’s looking pretty good now!

Now we’re going to plant it in a pot so that eventually, we’ll have a nice big avocado tree for our indoor garden. Right now, I’m using some wallboard tape; you can also use screen. I’m going to use this by putting it over the drainage hole because you don’t want the soil to keep creeping out as you water. You do, however, want a pot that has drainage holes.

I’m adding a little worm compost here and mixing it in with some Pro Mix BX. It’s important to add some water in here. Anytime you’re replanting something, you want moist soil; you don’t want it soggy, but you do want it moist. There are a couple of reasons for that.

First, you want the plant to have ready access to moisture when you plant it. Second, if you plant in very dry soil, what ends up happening when you water the pot is that the soil will settle very low, and you won’t have enough soil in the pot. This is the best thing to do.

Next, I’m going to add some starter fertilizer—something with a low NPK like 2-1-3 or 2-2-2. This is Dr. Earth; that’s a good brand. I’m mixing it in well. Now we’re going to gently add the first few handfuls to the pot so that you don’t dislodge the screening.

Keep adding the soil, but you don’t want to fill it all the way up, because you’re going to need to fit the plant in there. Okay, now we’re going to take it out. As you can see, we have some nice white roots and some nice brown roots. Look around for any stray pieces and pull anything out. Take off any roots that have become mushy; there aren’t really any on this one, but you want to check.

Make a nice little hole and fit it in, trying to fan the roots out a little bit as you do so. You want to keep the seed at about the level of the top of the pot. Put in soil and tamp down gently. You want to cover the seed up, but you don’t want to create a mound around it; you want to have it nice and even across the top.

Keep tamping down, and also make sure you have about an eighth of an inch of a rim. The soil should be about an eighth of an inch down. I like to tamp it down even closer, that way when you water, the water doesn’t overflow the pot but stays in the pot.

Now we have it all potted up. We’re going to go ahead and just clean it up a little bit. We’re going to give it some water. You want to water slowly, but you want to water thoroughly. Give it a good soaking. You probably won’t need to re-water for a week or even two weeks. Don’t re-water again until the top inch of soil has dried out.

Place the plant in a sunny window, such as a southern or eastern exposure. Thank you for watching! Please leave comments about any other indoor gardening tutorials you’d like to see, and remember to like, comment, subscribe, and share this video.

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