Kerry Nicol

I absolutely love avocados, I would eat them everyday if I could. Growing up in South Africa and Kenya meant that avocado trees were part of the landscape.

I’ve treated myself to an avocado four times this year. They mainly come from Mexico and are a lot smaller than what I’m used to. Since leaving Africa I’ve dreamed about having my own avocado tree. So I saved the four pits and have been trying to encourage them to sprout. Visit Garden Web to find out how to grow an avocado tree. So far three have rooted and one hasn’t done anything, of course I started the process at different times so they are all on a different schedule.

Today I photographed my four avocado experiments. The images are a little dark, I didn’t quite get the exposure and white balance right. Still learning!

The first picture was the first avocado I ate this year and has two very healthy looking leaves. The next two I ate within a week of each other. I tried two different methods one I potted as soon as it rooted and the other one I left in the water. The one I left in the water has successfully sprouted, the potted one is showing a few signs of splitting but no sprouting. The last one isn’t doing anything, it has been in the water for over two months now.

Anyway, I’m happy that I have one that has leaves and it may just turn into a healthy tree.  The only draw back would be space, if it ever grows over 7 feet tall it may cause a few problems inside!  The climate in Canada just isn’t suited to avocado trees, so I’m not sure what I would do if it actually got to that size.  No need thinking about these things now, it will probably take a few years for it to grow 7 feet.

My mouth is watering with all this avocado talk!