Garbage Gardening

Mango from pit makes an attractive indoor tree. The new leaves are burgundy red and sort of droopy, turning green and more upright as they mature.

Take a plump pit. Scrub with a nail brush to remove as much goop as possible. Look for the opening at one end. carefully, gently, slip a small paring knife into the hole and wiggle to crack open the stiff outer covering. You want to get the "nut" out without damaging it. Pot up in good potting soil, keep damp but not soggy.

Another garbage gardening house tree that I like is loquat - the new leaves are silvery / hairy. Very attractive.

My mom used avocado pits to grow a tree. It took her several years to actually get one to survive more than a couple years. The last one she had was beautiful and large. It was almost 5 feet. It never bared fruit but the leaves were a beautiful dark green.

I had several avocado plants growing. I simply put toothpicks around the pit (I didn't dig out the nut) and put it (round side down, tapered end sticking up) into a glass of water, so that the pit was resting on the rim of the glass by the toothpicks. The end would crack open for the roots and the top would open for the plant to grow. I usually placed a plastic bag over it for a bit of extra humidity. After it broke through and the roots got about 3 inches long or so, then I'd plant it in good potting soil and keep it loosely covered with the bag for a while, then gradually take the bag off. The plant is lush and gorgeous, if you take care of it. But I could never get it to bear fruit. I think it needed more light than I could supply, even with a plant light.

My sister had a banana tree (she bought it somewhere). When it reached the ceiling of her living room, it bore one tiny hand of bananas. And then it died. We both had coffee trees; I forget where we got them. And I had a gorgeous Calamondin orange tree that bore beautiful little, tart oranges that made quite a good jam. Alas, Hydrox, the Old Coot, kept peeing in the planter and eventually killed it. It wasn't until the tree was almost dead that we started putting chicken wire across the tops of every large planter in the house to stop him from peeing.

Never tried a loquat.

My mom did the same with the toothpicks. She never put them in a bag. She ended up planting hers in the yard.

I don't have the green thumb my mom had so I don't even bother.