How To Grow An Avocado Plant From Seed (And Will It Actually Bear Fruit?)

It's hard to remember, after years of guacamole and gourmet toast, that avocados are just plain weird. But think back to your surprise when you first discovered that these strange and delicious things, which look like some kind of otherworldly hard-boiled dragon egg, have the potential to transform everything from salads to smoothies to cosmetics. Crazy, huh? However, while they have many uses, they don't always have the potential to reproduce themselves in your dining room's bay window.

Hunker spoke exclusively with its Master Gardener, Jennifer Martin, to find out whether you're likely to grow a mature, fruit-bearing plant from seed. The answer is yes, but also no. Growing the tree itself isn't likely to be an insurmountable challenge, but having it produce fruit probably is. "There is a small chance that you could grow an avocado tree from a seed and get fruit at home," Martin said. "If you're using one from the store, the odds of getting fruit are almost zero, however."

Producing avocados presents a much bigger challenge than simply growing a plant from seed, but even the simpler task can be challenging with supermarket fruit. "Many people expect their avocado seed project to work with 100% certainty," Martin said, "but all gardening projects with store-bought fruit have potential failure rates even if you do everything right." Beyond that, evolution has engineered avocado trees to be particularly demanding when it comes to bearing fruit.

Growing the tree itself from seed is mostly a matter of following a few simple rules and managing your expectations. When Hunker exclusively spoke with its Master Gardener, Jennifer Martin, she explained that the process can be rewarding for adults and kids. "If you don't care about it producing fruit, it's actually a lovely houseplant. It kind of looks like a palm. Plus, it's just fun to grow a mini tree from a big seed like an avocado," Martin said. Bolster your odds with quantity and variety by attempting to germinate a few pits from both the green-skinned and black-skinned (Haas) avocado varieties.

To germinate an avocado pit from store-bought fruit, Martin said to "Wash the seed thoroughly, and let it completely air-dry overnight, then gently use a knife or your fingernails to peel the brown skin off of the seed so that only the white part is visible." She advises against the toothpicks-and-water method you might have used as a child and opts for using soil instead. "Fill a pot nearly full with potting soil and stick the pit into the dirt only halfway, with half of it visible" she said, adding: "Water deeply."

It will take three to six weeks to germinate your avocado, and you must keep the soil moist. "The soil shouldn't ever be dry to the touch," Martin said. "After the plant starts to emerge and becomes fully established, it will need bright, indirect light and regular watering every few days." She added that avocado trees grow slowly, so be patient and enjoy the process.

If you're trying to produce an avocado with fruit, that wait can get pretty long ... and the most likely outcome is that it never will. "Be prepared to wait a long time," Master Gardener Jennifer Martin told Hunker exclusively, "because it can take up to 15 years for it to produce fruit. At that point, it's almost certainly too big to be a houseplant — and it only grows outdoors in zones 9 and above." As a result, there are few places you can grow an avocado tree in the United States. But plant size and climate are only two of the problems with getting an avocado to bear fruit. There are a lot of conditions that must be met, from normal care considerations like soil, sunlight, watering, and fertilization to avocado-specific problems related to pollination requirements.

To improve your odds of producing fruit, it's crucial to understand the life cycle of the avocado tree. And while you can grow avocado trees from cuttings or supermarket seeds, these aren't the best way to go. "For optimum conditions for avocado fruit, you'd need to get the pits from a commercial grower," Martin said. But even with the best seeds, your odds are still very slim — which is why professional growers don't do it that way. "Most professionals use grafted tree saplings for actual fruit production," she said.