Avocado leaf browning, what is wrong?

I have placed my avocado seedlings on my window sill in my previous house. They were growing quite well and I didn't notice any abnormalities. However, I had to move house and I took them down from the window sill and notice that there are leaves turning brown. I'm not sure whether it is caused by salt accumulation or too much water.

As the new house has a big balcony which has at least 7 hours of direct sunlight, I'm afraid that it will burn the leaves. I bought new pots (bigger) and a couple of kilograms of garden soil. I just removed the seedling from the old pot together with the soil and placed it into the new bigger pot. I added the new garden soil around the perimeter to top-up the soil to the empty area.

I chose garden soil as I thought that it will be better than the commercialised potting soil. I will monitor closely and changed the soil if the plants are in stress.

I have three seedlings that have grown quite a bit and I placed one seedling in full direct sunlight and the remaining two in partial sunlight. Below are two photos that showed the leaves turning brown partially and not at the tip of the leaf. I was thinking of sun-burning of the leaves due to the intense sunlight but I'm not sure. Anyone has experience in this kind of problem? Please share and advise.

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Leaf turning brown - what is the cause?



Leaf turning brown - what is the cause?

Avocado leaf tips turning brown

Recently, I noticed that my 2nd and 3rd avocado plants have leaf tips turning brown. It started from the tip of the leaves and slowly moved towards the stalk. Small patches on the leaves also turned brown. It occurred on all the old leaves as new leaves start to emerge from the pruned area.

Leaf tip turning brown

Leaf turning brown

It could be due to salt accumulation and under watering. I water the plants every three days and maybe it needs another watering in between. See SG My Life Is Good blog on the avocado seedlings.

I did a research on the internet and found that it could be due to the two reasons that I have mentioned above. One way to remedy this is to flush the salt away from the soil by pouring water over the soil continuously until water comes out from the bottom of the pot. I poured about 1.5litres of overnight water over the soil and ensured that the water drained completely from the pot. I don't think that it is due to the sunlight because the plants are placed near the window but there is no direct sunlight. There are no strong winds except when I switch on the ceiling fan to the strongest and it can be quite strong. However, I don't think this is the reason but maybe due to the winds generated from the ceiling fan, the water in the pot dries up quickly. The browning of the leaf tip may be due to insufficient watering. I plan to water more frequently, so I'm going to water the plants every two days instead of three days. I may plan to place the plants under direct sunlight to see whether this will give better results but I doubt so. Since 2nd and 3rd avocado plants have leaf tip turning brown problem, I will take the 2nd plant and place it under direct sunlight in the weekend to see whether the browning slows down or stops completely.