The accidental avocados

Here is Essex, fall has finally come to the rooftop garden. It's always a sad day to clear away the old plants and bring in the few remaining tomatoes and peppers. In some cases it's attempting to batten down the hatches for the plants that stay outside during the winter. A few prima donnas, however, do get to come inside, namely the lemon and lime plants. However, they take their chances here as well, as Slocombe kitty can be wild despite her advanced age of 12, and when a fly or spider is noticed upon a plant, the kid gloves come off!

I do have winter potatoes still going on outside, however, and I recently bought a little greenhouse thingy, so I'll try to have a few things happening during these dreary months.

As I was checking out the garden, I was trying to get the final work done to set it for the winter as I have another Crashpadder guest potentially coming next week. I was trying to look at things with 'fresh eyes' and to make everything look tiptop. One area which always looks a little 'wild' is the makeshift compost bins:

Living on the fourth floor where there is no elevator, the garbage needs to get carried down the stairs and around to the back of the building, to a locked cage that contains a dumpster. In an effort to limit my trips down there, anything that is compostable goes into my bins here. Then, they are covered with a broken terra cotta pot, or periodically I'll toss some dirt on top to aid in the degrading. As it's mainly vegetable scraps from my cooking, coffee grinds and tea bags, as it breaks down and mixes with the soil it makes a nice addition to my growing dirt. As well, it keeps me from having to bring more dirt up four flights of stairs!

As I was looking at the random items that inevitably sprout in this rich mixture of table scraps, it's easy to pick out where some green potatoes from last season have self-sprouted. As well, I see the runt tomato plants that didn't make the first round for this season. In addition, there were two thin plants that seemed to grow a head above the others.

As the balcony is a little bit isolated, I knew that whatever it was had to be something from what I was putting in there. I was curious enough (and the compost has decomposed enough as I haven't put anything in it for a few weeks...too wet and cold), so I dug them out and studied the root end. Then went to confirm with google, and sure enough: avocados:

I've brought them in for now as the wisdom of the internet is suggesting that they cannot stay outside through the freezing temps.

Most interesting, if you want to grow your own avocado, there are detailed instructions here involving water, toothpicks and getting inside the pit to get the best results.

Or my quick instructions: throw pit 'as is' into container with all other food scraps and ignore. ;-)

On closer inspection of some of the other repeated plants, I believe I have some walnut trees growing as well. I had collected some fresh walnuts last year outside, but it seems that they were wild and non-edible so I threw them in the bin as well and here they come too. So those got their own pots outside, until we see what those do as well.

I am tentatively thinking ebay for the avocado plants as internet wisdom says that they grow mighty fast to a tall height. For these small ones, the roots reached the bottom of these pots already that I replanted them into, so I can believe that one.