Acrylic on canvas painting of a coffee plant that my brother painted. After a frame support repair, it’ll be hanging on the wall in our new apartment kitchen. Post-repair and installation photos will likely follow soon.

It’s been about 260 days since my first avocado plant germinated and almost 100 days since I last posted about it. Since both of those times, it’s come quite a long way and I’ve been impressed by it’s ability to thrive so well up here in Central New York when it is primarily grown in southern California, Mexico, New Zealand, and some parts of South America. It does surprisingly well indoors throughout the colder months, growing a new set of leaves every so often, but it really takes off up here in the late spring and summer. In the last few weeks, the plant has grown a number of inches and has produced two new sets of leaves and the third has already begun to emerge. Here are the photos of the plant that I took a little more than an hour ago.

As you can see from the photo below, the plant has added at least four new sets of leaves since I last posted about it three months ago and it’s stem has bulked up quite a bit and now dons some reddish speckles.

I’ve attempted to germinate four more avocado seeds since this one and so far, they’ve all successfully germinated and some have even developed into seedlings. The second seed that germinated and developed into a seedling was unfortunately eaten by a groundhog, but the third and fourth seeds have germinated and begun growing and the fifth is on it’s way. Here’s how the third plant is doing now.

More on the development of these guys and the rest of my 200+ vegetable plants of 2011 to come soon!

I’ve neglected to post routine updates on this one, but the avocado plant I’m growing is now at day 168. Surprisingly, it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. Since I started it back in October, I’ve started four other avocado seeds as well, but none of them have sprouted much vegetation yet, only small shoots with no leaves and lots of roots. As you can see in this photo, I transplanted the avocado plant into soil a while ago and it’s been growing very well. The leaves are huge!