Growing Fruit Trees Indoors from Seed

By Leslie Gadallah
Published on November 1, 1990
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Adobe Stock/jovinko

Start growing fruit trees indoors from seed — including avocado, citrus, more — by learning how to prepare seeds from fresh fruit for planting.

At our farmers market, my friend had found among the offerings of a Lebanese fish seller a confection made from the fruit of the tamarind. Looking somewhat like large raisins rolled in crystallized sugar, they had a pleasant, tart taste, and each had a big, shiny, odd-shaped seed in the center. To my dismay, my friend was spitting the fruit seeds onto the sidewalk. My own seeds were going carefully into my pocket.

“What are you going to do with them?” my friend asked.

“Plant them.”

He laughed. He is used to the somewhat odd habits of a seed scrounger. He knows me for one who is forever digging treasures out of the kitchen trash.

I don’t know that this is such a strange idea. Why throw away those lovely fruit seeds when all that’s needed to turn them into beautiful greenery is a little potting soil? An orange pit, for example, or one from a grapefruit or lemon, will make a small, pretty tree when grown in a pot, and a crushed orange leaf has one of the sweetest smells this side of a sprig of lilac. If you can get the tree to bloom, the flowers will perfume an entire house.

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