My boyfriend, boy-genius that he is, attempted to get an avacado seed to sprout, recently.
All we ended up with was an avocado seed in a carafe full of vaguely green water in the window sill.

Our big success has been herbs. My parents, who live in the Caribbean for part of the year, have very limited access to produce and nurseries. We've started basil, mint, parsley, and lemongrass by sticking a piece in water and letting it grow some roots and then throwing it in a pot. I'm thinking of doing this for herbs this late spring instead of buying starter plants.

I chopped off the top of a pineapple, placed it in a bowl of water (after quite a few months of "routing") once it grew roots large enough, I planted it some potting soil. It really started to look like a mini pineapple tree, it lasted for almost an entire year. Me being the dummy I am sometimes didn't bring it in for the winter and it never came back next spring. :[ It's pretty amazing, though how things grow from simple "scraps" people just toss away in the garbage or compost.

By the way it smells so badly after a while! I'm not sure if it was the bits of actual fruit still left on the party I chopped off or if it just was the process of the water soaking. But it got to be so bad sometimes I changed the water I soaked it in frequently.

like lotusmoss, I'm going to try getting herbs to grow roots instead of buying starter plants.

Onions and garlic are super easy.

Potatoes too.

The trick for avocado seeds to sprout is that you need one from a tree that's grown naturally, not a hybrid - such as the ones you find in a supermarket.

My parents have a 60 foot avocado tree in the back yard and have successfully given starter plants to friends and family.

I actually did grow successful tomatoes from seeds harvested from one I was eating. They were called Flavorino tomatoes, and were a hybrid of a grape and roma tomato (I assume). These particular tomatoes had been grown at a year-round greenhouse in the area, so maybe they were specially bred to work indoors?

Fun thing was, each plant ended up with completely different sized tomatoes. Some plants would produce tomatoes closer to the size of a roma, others would be much closer to a grape. They all ended up tasting delicious though - and grew far better than those from garden store seeds.

I have tried the pineapple more than once, but never managed to get it to root. I've planted lemon seeds and am planning on planting garlic. All is fun, so long as you don't expect the plant that you're growing from seed to deliver on the same type of fruit as you bought in the supermarket.

I've pretty much stopped buying green onions. If you're using just the green part for a recipe, you can plant the white part in soil, and then you have a continuous source of green onions. They easily lasted through both the Texas winter and summer.

My dad successfully rooted a mango pit from a grocery store mango, imported all the way to Northern Ontario. He scraped off all the pulp and kept it wrapped in moist paper towels on a plate. Eventually a root came out of it so he stuck it in a pot of dirt - a few months later he had a 3 foot tall leafy sapling in the living room! Sadly it seemed to wither after that, we figure it might have something to do with inadequate root space ...

I soaked beans to cook them, but got lazy the next day....and the next....and the next and then they all sprouted. So I planted a few in cleaned out yogurt containers - and they are growing super fast! It was a mixed bean group, so I haven't quite figured out which ones are growing the best. It ended up being a pretty exciting accidental plant though.

In college, I had a yam that I forgot about and it sprouted. I planted it and named him "Yammy Davis, Jr." It was actually a beautiful plant!

What perfect timing for a post! I went to a Mushroom Cultivation class last night and came home with two containers filled with potting soil and mycelium (the vegetative part of the fungus). One box is being kept cold and wet in the basement, one warm and wet in the attic. But it will take a couple months until I know if I'm successful...

Apparently you can also grow shiitake mushrooms by injecting their mycelium into an Oak log. But that takes years. I'm sticking with my cardboard box in the basement for now.

I just planted an onion that was starting to sprout in a pot and its growing SO fast! I'm hoping it hangs in there!

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5095/5445725716_3208c6679b.jpg

As some other poster said before I successfully planted spring onions from the little root scraps that I had left over. I did the same with leeks. They grow thinner than what you get in the store though.
My mom gave me seeds from an heirloom tomato brand called White Beauty once and I grew amazing tomato plants from them, better than any bought tomato plants that I had.

I tried vegetable gardening in pots last year and not much luck except for the swiss chard.

mmm I was so amazed at how WONDERFUL it tastes fresh that I'm definitely increasing the number of chard plants this year.

I have grown avocado successfully as well as peppers.

The trick is, especially for the avocado, to dry the stone for a few weeks (much like you would do with a tulip bulb).
Then plant it in soil, half stone in ground, half out with the pointy side up.
Keep watering, but as with any plants, be careful not to overwater (rot) or dry the ground out.
Good luck!

I have a 3' tall avocado plant in my house as we speak! I had tried sprouting avocado pits before, but when we moved into our new house I gave it one more shot, and it worked! I'm told I'll get avocados in 20 years.

I actually have the benefit of a very productive compost heap! Last summer I got a ton of volunteers: tomatoes (super tasty and tart) and potatoes. Since I live in southern CA I've already got potatoes and several pumpkins sprouting now. I often get green onions and leeks from the root ends we toss when cooking.
It's always a surprise when something new pops up. I had to learn the hard way what potato vines look like... yes, I pulled a bunch up to plant outside of the compost heap (not knowing what they were) and never got them back. Oh well; I can't complain when I didn't even plant them on purpose in the first place!

I've had several successes in the last 3 years.

First was a pineapple top, carefully peeled to expose the rooting knubbins at the bottom and suspended in water until it sprouted. It was living as a tag-a-long in a palm's pot for nearly 2 years not doing anything. This year I uprooted it and put it out on the balcony for the summer and it went nuts in its own planter.

Second, I can see out of the corner of my eye, a fully established avocado tree. Started, as everybody knows, from toothpicks and a glass of water, it's about 4 feet tall now and thick with leaves.

My smallest and favorite is my Pomelo sprout. I harvested some rather large seeds from my favorite "eat over the sink" citrus, peeled off the waxy coating on the seeds and got them to sprout. The survivor of this experiment is over a year old now, about a foot tall, and hungrily growing toward the light.

As for Herbage, I must be doing something wrong, because every seed I plant has to go outside for the summer or it dies. Every plant I buy and try to cultivate in my kitchen also croaks within a few weeks. Perhaps a good article on indoor herb gardens is in order?

I have several avocado plants that have dropped root from store bought avocados. They take a lot of time, though. I've found that a lot of people put the wrong side into the water. It happens....

I've had a lot of (unintentional) success with onions...the ones I forget about in the pantry and they start growing. I pop them in the ground outside and they create beautiful flowers that attract a lot of bees. I put them close to my garden so that the bees come and help pollinate.

My mango tree!

I had always wanted to grow a citrus plant from seed when I relocated to FL, but I read that the seeds of most fruit that you buy from the store will be the product of a hybrid plant developed by breeders. If you plant the seeds, you will not get the same type of fruit that you bought at the store. But, fortunately, store-bought key limes are the exception. These seeds are "true-type" (unlike store bought lemons and limes) and will produce the same fruit. I bought a bag, juiced the limes for a key lime pie, and went about getting the seeds to sprout. I ended up with 12 (!) separate seedling plants, which has now been reduced to 3 as I gave many away as gifts and lost a few. They are still going strong after almost 2 years, but grow a little slower than normal because they don't get the full sun they want on my covered porch. It is a very dedicated process as the trees don't mature for 3-5 years, but I am so excited that I will eventually have my own stash of key limes!

My great-grandmother grew everything from slips. She never grew an avocado, but countless vegetables and flowers. Once she basically stuck a bouquet of silver roses in the dirt and they grew into a bush. She was a champ. Plus: good soil in the Santa Cruz mountains.

I tried planting beans from the dried beans you can buy at the store. Every single one sprouted, and grew to a marvelous size, but I didn't get one single bean off of any of the bushes.

Not much luck with avocados, but I did grow a ginger plant from a root I got at the supermarket.

I currently have two avocado plants that I've had for about a yr that started out as a seed. They aren't doing great but then I should pay better attention to 'em. I'm constantly attempting to grow tomatoes (eat so many of them) and what happens is that I'll plant the seeds, very quickly get sprouts, it grows well but then sort of stops growing (but still looks healthy) but never grows fruit. Once I got little tiny tomatoes but that's it. I also always stick the tiny pineapple seeds in soil but never get anything from that.

I read that growing garlic was super easy -- just take a clove and stick it, pointy side up, about an inch down in a pot with some dirt. I put four cloves into four pots, and all but one of them shriveled up and died. They all shot up remarkably fast, but they just didn't hang in there. I'm wondering what may have gone wrong. Any help? And is there anything I can do to safeguard my lone survivor? It's a long time yet, I think, until it will be harvest-able.

criv227 that is because it was a hybrid. since hybrids are produced with two inbred, pure strains they will either not produce viable seeds or - as in your case, produce seeds that revert back to one of the parent varieties.

i am so proud of my ginger plant from a store bought ginger. it grew up to 1 meter with 2 stems, then it got a cold chill one day when someone left the window open and it died. i will try again though! i also have had great onions of all kinds. i buy the small ones, plant them, let them get much bigger and then use them in my food. :)

I have grown avocado,
like this link' photo.
http://celonabar.com/tag/neldrip

Ive tried avocado five or six times and have never had them work. I do have two pineapples on my balcony that I have grown from store bought fruit. It took a long while to get them to root and Ive been told that they grow painfully slow. Ive also sprouted peppers from seeds that I pulled out of a pepper from the grocery store, and they did well, but then died when I re-potted them.

I start to be curious with avocados, and my father just clean the seed, put it on the sun for a couple of days and later he put this seed in my pots XD well, I can said that we have two avocado trees in the middle of other small trees that I grow. The problem with super market avocados is the refrigiration, I live in Mexico, city and in a market where you can found fresh food you can save the seed and plant it, the majority of the plants gonna born or sprout XD sorry with my bad english, I hope you can understand. I have orchid trees, avocados, and jacaranda trees. Just I start to try, and try and finally mother nature do the rest, a good soil and water can help too.

I've sprouted dozens of avocados over the last few years. For some reason only about a third to half of them succeed. Some took a really long time, like several months. Unless the root starts to decay, I just kept changing the water occasionally and they sprouted. Some stopped growing just as the sprout emerged, but then re-sprouted many times and then stopped growing again. I am not sure if the water level was too high or low. Warm weather seems to help them sprout. One plant I grew from seed was in a pot for about ten years, but eventually took off when I planted it in the ground. The trick is to give it a LOT of water in those first few years. We've only gotten a couple of avocados from it, and yes it did take a long time, maybe 15 years.

those who've had success with avocado plants from seed -- how long did it take for the pit to sprout?

i've had my avocado pit suspended in a jar of water for ~ 5 weeks now and have yet to see any sprouting action. it hasn't been too warm here in NJ, but i have the pit in a sunny window and the house is usually above 70 degrees. when the skin started cracking and peeling off, i manually peeled much of it off thinking i was helping the process along. but maybe that was a mistake? also, i put the toothpicks in about halfway up the pit, so maybe it's not submerged enough?