Please Advise on Sprouting Avocado Seeds for Trees

[johnb51]

I have avocados "fresh from the farm" in CA, untreated and unadulterated in any way.  If I want to start seedling trees from some of the seeds, what's the best method?  Here's the catch.  My family and I are going on a 2-week trip from the end of May to almost the middle of June.  I need to start this project when I return so how best to store the seeds until then?  Would refrigerating them be okay?  Thanks, guys.

[MasonG31]

I store mine in a cup of room temperature water, uncovered, and leave it on my kitchen counter.  I’ve stored them for 2 months like this with no problems.  I wouldn’t refrigerate them.  Might be too cold in there for them.

[Greg A]

Hi John,
There are many ways you could keep the seeds viable until mid-June. Mason's is a good one.

You can also keep them dry and leave them in a cool, shady place for quite some time. Brokaw Nursery in California just keeps their seeds outdoors in big sacks in the shade. I'm not sure exactly how long you can leave them this way, but certainly a few weeks is not too long.

You can refrigerate them too. Back in the 70's some California researchers cleaned and dried seeds and then put them in plastic bags in the fridge for a full year and still got satisfactory germination. See: https://www.avocadosource.com/CAS_Yearbooks/CAS_59_1975/CAS_1975-76_PG_070-071.pdf

[spaugh]

You can put them in pots of dirt with the seeds buried 3 or 4 inches and get it real wet then leave them in the garage or somewhere cool and shady so they stay wet.  Or just put the pots outside where they will get watered if you have sprinklers.  Nothing special to do, just plant them in pots.

Bowl of water on the counter is fine too but it will dry up after 2 weeks most likely. 

[sc4001992]

John, here's what I did, and it keep them all fresh. Just clean all the seeds, put them in a large pot with Vermiculite, water it good, then put it in the shade. You pot should not have any drain holes so the moisture stays a little longer. I used an old refrigerator plastic drawer. It should be good like this for months, you can keep it in this pot and water it if you want to grow it out as well. I did this for 75 seeds a few years ago, almost all (95%) the seeds grew fine. But what a pain to remove it from the pot and separate each one with roots into individual pots.

[johnb51]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions.

[pagnr]

Recently I have been wrapping the clean seed in a moist kitchen paper towel, slightly wet the paper towel then scrunch it around the seed. Then into a zip lock bag.
Best if the seed is clean of any fruit flesh.
This stops the seed drying out in open storage, and seems to wake it into pre germination.
There are also hot water treatments for prevention of seed infection by fungi, used by commercial growers.
Many Avocado rootstock growers plant the seed in tall pots or bags, rather than flats.
For those seed with a pointy end, plant point up, usually part in / part out of the mix.
For rounder seed, plant point up if you can tell, otherwise the top of the seed is where it was inside the fruit.

The many different methods will work.

Another approach was the one by my friend Dave, from Tropical Nth Qld.
He lives in a open side house in the jungle.
Basically he threw any Avocado seed as far as he could, out through the open kitchen window into the jungle.
He was originally American, and must have learnt to pitch at different bases, because last time I saw him he had quite a wide spread of fruiting Avocado trees coming along.

[johnb51]

Another approach was the one by my friend Dave, from Tropical Nth Qld.
He lives in a open side house in the jungle.
Basically he threw any Avocado seed as far as he could, out through the open kitchen window into the jungle.
He was originally American.

That explains it!

[kapps]

Avocado seeds are pretty resilient. They germinate readily in the compost bin. I even found one out in the yard that was dropped by the animal that took it from my compost bin 

[Avofan]

If you put them in Tupperware or ziploc with a moist paper towel, you can get the germination process started. You could be gone for like 2 months and when you come back they should have some good tails - no problem. I have a sort of perpetual seed germination in a large glass food storage container and I just toss cleaned avo seeds in there and take out whatever has tails. Check about once a week. Takes a while for them to crack