Avocado plant stopped growing
kristineyu21
Posts: 3
It's my first time planting something and I don't know much about planting. It's been two months since I had my avocado pit suspended in a cup of water. It had grown up to 7 inches and I cut it back to 3 inches (they were supposed to be pinched out to promote growth according to some articles I've read). After cutting it back, it had stopped growing and the tip of the stem had dried up 
. After 2 days, I cut it back just a few centimeters to remove the dried part, hoping that it would start growing again but it didn't. Will it ever start growing again? How? Please I need help I really want to save my plant.
PS. Just a few days ago, our cat knocked the cup off the table and the avocado pit had split into two. And I noticed the roots were kinda damaged. Would this have somehow caused the plant to stop growing? The plant still continued to grow even if the pit had split though. I put them back together with a rubber band.
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Hi there. Sorry to hear about what's happening to your avaocdo pit - I can understand you wanting to save it as you've gone to all that effort of growing it. I have three, and I know it takes ages for them to start sprouting.
I have recently transferred two of the three into pots and the third isn't growing very well. The one which slowed down, sprouted first was also growing the fastest initially. Then I changed the water about three times as I transferred it from a cup to a jar to a bottle. I feel the change of water affected the growth of this one. The other two pits had no water or jar change and overtook the first one and these are now in pots.
When the cat knocked the cup over, was the root still attached to half of the pit? And how bad is the root damage - did it actually break or is i still intact? If still attached to the pit I reckon it could come back. But I did read or watch something that suggested they should be as undisturbed as possible, especially the water, and my experiment seems to suggest this too.
Sorry I have not been much help. Do you have a photo you could share so I can see how damaged it is?
Avocados grow into huge trees and they will not last forever growing just in water. Once the root appeared the avocado should have been planted into compost.
Yes lol avocados do grow into big trees if you manage to get that far with it. It might sound silly to seasoned gardeners to try and grow them but it's just a bit of fun, an easy thing for beginners to try. A lot of young people are doing at the moment as there have been pics and infographics trending on Pinterest, Tumblr, youtube and the like for a while now. It's not totally clear when they need to go into water - advice varies. You don't necessarily have to do it as soon as the root appears - infographics show them growing quite long roots and stalks before potting and mine didn't go in straight away and are fine. I did mine as soon as the leaves were a couple of inches long, the stalk and root both about 6-7 inches. I've put them into 1 litre pots with compost and will bring them inside as a houseplant when it gets too cold outside!!
Last edited: 08 September 2016 22:33:33
I have got some ginger plants about 60cm tall growing in my greenhouse from fresh ginger roots - left over from making curry - that developed little buds on them. Nothing will come of them and like you, wakeshine, I did it just for fun. I have also got my Avocado stone sitting over water on my kitchen window sill. Nothing happening there yet
Oh see Ladybird you're joining in with all this malarkey too. Don't you think you'll get any ginger roots from that? Have you got an actual plant growing? We won't get avocados but yours could happen!? We have ornamental ginger in the garden at work (RCP medicinal garden, London)! I didn't even realise there were so many different type of ginger...
When you cut it back, did you remove all the green leafy bit? If you did,then you will have removed the growing tip.
Most plants send out new leaves or shoots from the leaf axil - the angle where the leaf joins the stem. As the plant grows some of the lower leaves may fall off, but you can still see a slight bump on the stem from where they were. If you cut back to just above one of these bumps - a node - then there is a good chance of new shoots. Young plants may not have any nodes and if you cut below the lowest leaves you have effectively beheaded it.
Some types of plant have the ability, when mature, to send out shoots from their roots, which is why cutting back works
Pinching out means carefully removing the youngest pair of leaves where they emerge from the pair below. This leaves the buds in the leaf axils able to grow and form two new shoots instead as the one you started with. Better luck next time
Are you saying that changing the water can affect the growth of the plant? I've been changing my plant's water frequently, I didn't know it was bad for them ><.
Yes, the roots were still attached to half of the pit. Here's a picture of it:
I noticed that the seed and the roots were also changing in color. Is it an indication that the plant is dead?
Thank you so much for your reply! I guess I'll just plant another one. I'll do three just to be sure.
Yeah, I did
I cut it back waaaay too much. I removed half of the stem >< I just followed what I read in an article, I didn't know that I was supposed to only cut a small bit of the plant. Well, lesson learned. 
Thank you for the reply~
These trees get huge in their natural state so you will never get fruits from a teeny one grown in a house in the UK. You will just end up with compost heap fodder.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
Obelixx I don't think people do this to get fruit, it's just a fun experiment to do and it's trending on websites such as Tumbler, instagram and Pinterest. Sooo many people seem to be doing it as silly as it seems!!