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?

Growing avocado in Singapore

Time to check in with growing avocado in Singapore. I have three avocado seedlings growing in the pots with soil. They are on my windowsill that faces the western sun. The seedlings are growing well with new leaves appearing. One of the seedlings has a lot of leaves that make the top a bit heavy for the stem. I want the seedlings to have more branches instead of growing upwards. So, I need to trim or prune it. The leaves at the very bottom are quite hard to touch. They are not soft liked the new leaves that form on the canopy. I do not want the seedlings to grow tall as I know that avocado can grow into a tree if it is left unpruned.

As you can see from the photo below, the seedling has many leaves and there is only one branch. I think by trimming the top leaves, it will force the seedling to grow new branches. I also trimmed the branch to promote growth of other branches. Let's hope this works.

Avocado seedling

The pit of the avocado does not have the same phenomena as the one in water. The pit is still the same size and colour. It does not turn brown and rot as in the case of the avocado growing in water.

Pit of avocado

Another strange that I observed is that some leaves curled up as shown in the photo below. Is it due to the sunlight or normal for the leaves to curl at the stalk area? I'm not sure but the leaves tend to curl inwards and not spread out as in the normal plant.

Leaf curled

Yes, not just one leaf, there are quite a number of the leaves curling up. Those are smaller in size that the ones at the canopy. That is why I'm suspecting that they are affected by the sunlight.

Leaves curling

 

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.

New bud growing from base of avocado leaf

New buds are growing out from the bases of the avocado leaves. It has been one month since I pruned the avocado seedlings. The cut area has healed nicely and the seedlings are doing well. I rotate the pots occasionally to let the leaves expose to the indirect sunlight. See my other post on the leaves bent towards the sunlight.

The third seedling is growing faster than the second seedling. I can see the leaflets forming distinctly in the third seedling. The leaves are not drooping and straighten up. I will need to do more research on how to prune the new buds. Maybe I will prune it when there are 3 leaves and snip away the tip when the time is right. Stay tuned to see the progress of growing avocado plant indoor.

New bud from 3rd seedling

New bud from 2nd seedling

 

Avocado leaf bends towards direction of sunlight

I was sitting on my sofa when I realized that there were no leaves on one side of my avocado plants. I was quite puzzled and upon investigation, I realized that the leaf had bent towards the windows. The leaf wanted to catch the sunlight and literally bent its stalk. Amazing it is and now I have rotated the pot to allow the leaf to bend back to normal. I think I'm going to rotate the pot every few days so that the growth of leaves will be even. I also noticed that the leaves away from the light source are small than the ones facing the light. Do not leave the plants in direct sunlight because this will kill the plants. Place them under indirect sunlight.