Hot to grow an Avocado plant from a seed.
Growing an Avocado plant from a seed is an easy thing to do. After you are done eating the Avocado you take the pit and clean it. Wash off any fruit to prevent molding. Let it dry for a day or two.
Now there are plenty of ways to continue but I figured out that the usual and most popular way is a little cumbersome. It involves the toothpick technique which is a solid but "costly" method. Here is my setup of this technique:
One obvious disadvantage of this methood is the water level which needs to be maintained manually and which is not desirable. Hence, I needed to find another solution which would ease the procedure.
The obvious solution was to create a floating seeder which would maintain its water level on its own. This would ease the process and ensure that the pit would not dry out. So I started investigating and luckily I own a 3D printer and luckily others are facing the same problems ;)
The challenge for a 3D printed floating seeder is that there needs to be a way to adjust the water level of the pit depending on its size. This is required since the pit needs to be covered by water for 50%.
Also the seeder needs to float properly and not just tip over if the seed is not a perfectly shaped monolith.
Also, the design should be easy and fast to print and not involve any major adjustments.
Lastly, the design should be as small as possible since I don't want to waste any space.
After some research I've found two solutions which seemed to a good starting point:
This seeder lets you adjust the height of the pit carriere with a thread so it can be adjusted to the size of the pit.
One disadvantage of this solution was the printing effort. Since it's a little more complex and consists of two parts it took a while to be printed. So I kept looking for something simpler.
The next available solution lets you adjust the water level by applying some weight on top of it.
This worked seamlessly and since it was simple to print it looked like a promising solution. One disadvantage of this design is the size. The outer ditch seemed a little too big imho.
The final step after evaluating the existing solution is to design a floating seeder based on the available solutions...
to be continued...