A wise man once said, if you stick an avocado stone in a glass near a window, in three weeks you’ll have a wet stone and the smell of feet in your kitchen. Sounds like a call to arms to me.
Materials
- An avocado
- Toothpicks
- A glass
- A house, or a place to put a plant
- Patience – about two months worth
- Tequila (optional)
Instructions:
- Go buy one avocado. Do something useful with it, like make a very small amount of guacamole. Or halve it and sprinkle salt and pepper on it.
- Eat it. Go on, it’s good for you. I think.
- Set aside the stone. If you ate the stone – that’s very impressive. Now go back to step 1.
- If you didn’t eat the stone, go and get four toothpicks. Or three if you have exceptionally good balancing and engineering skills. Seven if you’ve been drinking tequila and decided this was a GREAT idea about ten minutes ago.
- Piece the stone at the 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions. Make sure the toothpicks are perpendicular to the stone. They should all be coplanar too. That’s a fancy way of saying “don’t just shove random toothpicks into the stone angrily and haphazardly”. If you break the toothpicks in the process, get more. I suggested seven – did you forget
- Take a glass. Drink the tequila out of it first if needed. Fill it with water. Rest the stone on the top of the glass. The stone should be AT LEAST half-submerged in the glass.
- Put your interesting contraption somewhere that gets a little bit of sunlight. Like a windowsill. Forget it about for about a week.
- After a week, check on the stone. Notice nothing is happening. Realize it’s a waste of time and you’re an idiot. Top the water level up. You know, because it’s the right thing to do.
- Check back again after another week. Notice no change. Have significant other complain about the smell of water and dirty stone. Top the water level up. Have argument about ‘always believing everything you read on the internet’. Consider divorce. Realize you are too lazy to move all your stuff.
- Check back again in a week. Feel like something is happening. Not sure if stone is opening, or just decaying slowly. Top the water level up. Consider going to Lowe’s and buying a fucking plant instead.
- Check back again in another week. Notice white thingy growing into the water. Wonder if avocadoes can get worms like tequila does. Drink tequila. Invent reason why you needed to on a Wednesday.
- Check back again in another week. Notice stone is either wormier than Dennis Rodman or there’s actually roots growing. Celebrate small victory.
Now, here’s what I have:
This was taken after three weeks of initial growth. Once the stem broke the surface of the stone, it grew very quickly.
Now, I got excited about this before I did my homework. It can take AT LEAST FIVE YEARS for a tree to bear fruit – and that’s under optimal conditions (including proper feeding with nitrogen and phosphorus) with an grafted tree (which this isn’t). So maybe this one is magical or something and I’ll be pleasantly surprised.