Avacado plants

Avocado

Hello, 

Over the last few months I have been attempting to grow avacado plants. 

I successfully managed to sprout 6 plants from shop bought avacados. After a couple months or so, these plants all had a thick and well established root system and I decided to plant them in some compost. 

Unfortunately, the leaves on all but one plant are now turning brown, shriveling, and falling off. As each leaf has died, I've removed it from the plant.

Each plant has been well watered twice in the last month and are suspended so as to allow sufficient draining. They are all also on a sunny windowsill. 

Does anyone have any advice as to what might be going on with these plants?

philippasmith2

Avocados are trees which are unsuited to the UK.  They sprout easily from the stones as you have discovered.  I have 2 happily growing in a compost bin outside in SW UK - results of the stones chucked in the bin.  
You can persevere with them and simply treat them as house plants.  Difficult to tell from your pics as to the size of the pot but you would appear to have a lot of damp compost in there. As the temps drop, so will the leaves.  If the roots and stem remain healthy, you will hopefully see a revival come the warmer weather next year.

Avocado

Thank you for your response, @philippasmith2 . Interestingly, I was thinking that the plants were getting too much direct sunlight. Over the last couple weeks I have had some good spells of warm weather and with the plants being in the window sill this warmth will have been magnified. Namely, I was thinking they could have suffered from leaf burn. Admittedly, however, the temperature of the room they are in drops at night and this could be having the negative effect you mention. Confusingly for me, one of my (newer) avocado plants is doing just fine.  

msqingxiao

It does look a bit like sun-burnt / lack of watering to me. I've got a few avocado plants growing indoors, including one that got neglected to only one leaf left, but bounced back afterwards. I found that their leaves tend to droop quite a bit between watering, but otherwise relatively fuss free. They overwintered well last year, with the rooms typically around 15-18C during the day and down to 10C in the night. Will see if they can hold up as well this winter being bigger plants.

MikeOxgreen

I've grown an Avocado this year in the greenhouse, it's been up to 40 and 50c in there and it's fine so I don't think it's that. It's also seen a night of 3c recently and has been brought in now.
I think they're hardier than you think, but they are obviously indoor plants.
You water them when they need it, not twice a month, that's less than a cactus. It sounds like that is possibly the problem, they haven't had enough water and have dried out.

The only other possibility is that it's something in the compost they don't like because that's when they went downhill.

Dovefromabove

You may find this interesting …

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=554u7KB81M8 

😊 

Avocado

Thank you @MikeOxgreen for your reply. I am sceptical as to whether my issue is a lack of watering as the soil is far from dried out. Based on your second suggestion, I will remove the plants from their current soil, rinse their roots, and replant them in fresh soil tomorrow. @Dovefromabove An avocado tree in residential London, how fascinating! Thank you for sharing. 

Dovefromabove

When growing avocados indoors I’ve found they are happiest and healthiest with good light but not direct sunlight, and with fairly high humidity around the leaves but not soggy soil. 

When the plants reach about 18” tall I cut them back to about 9” which then encourages the development of sideshoots and the plant develops into an elegant ‘bush shape’ more suited to a houseplant, rather than the more usually seen tall single stem with a bunch of leaves at the top. 

😊 

MikeOxgreen

Avocado said:

Thank you @MikeOxgreen for your reply. I am sceptical as to whether my issue is a lack of watering as the soil is far from dried out. Based on your second suggestion, I will remove the plants from their current soil, rinse their roots, and replant them in fresh soil tomorrow. @Dovefromabove An avocado tree in residential London, how fascinating! Thank you for sharing. 

It's just odd that you're watering so little when they're behind glass in full sun. Some info is missing, it may be down to pot size (huge) or something else.
Browned and dropped leaves are usually down to underwatering.
What compost have you put them in?
I've got mine in rich, but loose well draining home made compost which is what they like.

Killer compost usually creates strange curled and mangled plants which still grow, but in a deformed way.

Avocado

Today I have replanted each plant in new finer soil and smaller grow pots. I've also put a small plastic bag over each in an attempt to increase humidity. Hopefully this will help.