Planting an avocado pit is a great project for children, and also a very cheap and easy way to grow a beautiful, evergreen houseplant. The avocado pear is a tropical fruit, and if left to its own devices grows into a very large tree, and so isn't the best choice if you are trying to grow a plant that produces edible fruit in most gardens.

The traditional method of planting an avocado pit is to germinate it in water. Once the pit is extracted from a ripe avocado, it is suspended above a jar or tumbler filled with water.

Gently push 3 or 4 toothpicks, or hairpins, into the pit just far enough to support its weight. Balance it on the top of your container and then fill the container with warm water so that just the base of the pit is submerged. You will need to keep the water topped up every day so that the base of the pit stays immersed.

Make sure that you have the pit the right way up. Most pits are broader at the base than at the tip, but if yours is oval then the base is the end which is wrinkled; the tip of the pit is always smooth.

As avocados come from a tropical climate, they need warmth to germinate. If you can keep the water in the container warm (in a heated propagator or the airing cupboard), you will greatly increase the chance of your pit growing, and the speed with which it does so. Depending on how ripe the pit is, and the temperature at which it is kept, germination can take anything from 10 days to 5 weeks.

If the base of the pit starts to rot, and the water becomes cloudy, then the pit probably wasn't viable to begin with. Throw it out and try again with a fresh pit from a really ripe avocado.

The first sign of life will be roots emerging into the water. If you have your pit on a sunny windowsill then you should shade the roots from too much light. Try wrapping paper around the container so that you can remove it when you want to see how the roots are doing, but they aren't always in the light.

A shoot will grow from the tip of the pit next. When this shoot is about 6 inches long, you need to snip off its tip so that it doesn't keep growing you want to grow a bushy houseplant, not a great big tree. This may mean removing all the leaves that have grown, but don't worry the pit will send out a new leafy shoot in about a week.

An avocado plant grown in water this way will need repotting into a small pot after a few weeks. It can survive in just water for quite some time, so there's no need to rush this stage. The potting

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