It was Jo Gillis and the miracle of her “Charlie Brown” peach tree that got things started. Shortly after reading that post near the end of July I plopped into pots the pits of a pair of peaches (say that three-times fast) to see if they might grow, but so far nothing yet.

Jo later asked if I’d ever successfully grown an avocado from seed and I told her I’d previously and unsuccessfully attempted the same “drop, cover and hope” method as the peach pits and just for the heck of it googled “how to plant an avocado tree” and of course found out How To Plant An Avocado Tree. Passing on that link to her, she replied that she was going to give it a try and shortly thereafter so did I — aided in part by the seed of a store-bought Haas avocado that had already grown what the instructions call the “tap root.”

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That’s the one on the far left, above (click to quadruplify), which has since added additional roots. As you can see since we immersed that one on August 5, we’ve grown our collection to include the seeds of every avocado we’ve consumed since.  The one on the far right also had a tap root already in progress; the one left of center has cracked and a tap root is just beginning to emerge and the one right of center is the least developed of the quartet.

We’ve yet to come up with names for them.

Adding to the hopes for the long-haul success of this undertaking is the recent discovery of the removal of an amazing neighborhood avocado tree around the corner from us that I wrote about on Blogging.la in April 2006. While walking the dogs last week I was shocked and heartbroken to find the towering tree so fantastically laden with fruit the previous year had been completely and totally destroyed.

Here’s hoping one or more of these babies can be its replacement.