We have tried this experiment many times. Sometimes it is successful, and other times it is not. This is science after all! If you are successful you can grow yourself a lovely houseplant. It is an awesome science project because you can see seed germination, a process that is normally under the soil, happen right before your eyes.
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| Avocados (photo by Ms. Tea, Flickr) |
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| The enormous avocado pit (right) and a relatively small one (left). ©SBF 2015 |
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In order to try to germinate this seed you have to submerge the bottom part of it in water. An alternative, as described in the book, Don't Throw it, Grow it! is to germinate the pit in a bag of sphagnum moss. As I was fresh out of sphagnum, the water method had to do!
All you need to do is stick 3-4 toothpicks into the bottom half of the pit to hold it up in a glass of water. Which side is the bottom? If your pit has a point on one side, that is the top. If it is round, like my big avocado pit was, you'll have to pay attention to which end came from the same side as the stem on the actual avocado. This side is the top.
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| ©SBF 2015 |
Place the pit in the water, resting the toothpicks on the glass.
Keep the water level high so that the bottom of the avocado stays
submerged and watch what happens. The beauty of this experiment is
that you can see all of the process through the glass. If you don't
see the pit begin to split and roots forming after several weeks, try
a different avocado pit.
Here is an avocado plant that we grew from a pit we found germinating in the compost bin. The large seed was split and roots were growing out of it. Due to my plant obsession, I quickly potted it and a few months later we have a nice new houseplant. As fun as it would be to harvest our own avocados, this plant will always just be for decoration. Without being in a hot natural climate it will never produce fruit.
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| Avocado houseplant ©SBF 2015 |
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| Avocado houseplant ©SBF 2015 |
I enjoy seeing the plants you can grow from the seeds that you find in your food. If this sounds like a fun idea to you, you might want to check out my posts, "Saturday Science Experiment: Grow a Plant from Food Scraps" and "See it? Share it! A Grapefruit Sprout and an Indoor Flower Garden"
Last winter I grew a grapefruit plant. Although my grapefruit sprout those old blog posts has indeed grown into a little plant, it is not very tall. It does have nice shiny leaves though!
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| Grapefruit Plant ©SBF 2015 |
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| Tiny grapefruit plant! ©SBF 2015 |
If you are fascinated by seeds or are teaching a plant unit, you might be interested in this lesson: Seed Size from the Lawrence Hall of Science. You need an avocado pit to do it!
You'll also find a ton of fascinating blog posts about seeds in Growing With Science's series "Seed of the Week".
Oh my gosh, I am so impressed with your avocado plant. We've tried this activity a few times but without success. After reading your post I am motivated to give it another try. We did grow a banana tree from seed and it's growing astonishingly fast.
ReplyDeleteThere were certainly many attempts before this one! I've had more luck with them taking off in our compost bin, but it is fun to see it happen indoors too. I can't seem to get them to live more than a year or two though before they die!
DeleteI'm impressed with the banana tree! Did you get the seed from a banana from the grocery store, or was it something you purchased? We'd love to try it! :)