New avocado branch bending towards the light

New bud emerged and soon grew into a new branch. This is on my third avocado plant and from the second pruning. The shoot is red in colour and bends towards the window. I rotate the pot to face the shoot at the opposite direction. The shoot will straighten up and continue to grow upwards.

Branch bent towards light

I will let the new branch to have four leaves before I do the third pruning. The browning on the leaves seemed to be in control. I think it is due to insufficient watering that caused the browning. Another reason may be due to the water that I used. I didn't let the chlorine to escape from the tap water before watering. Now I will fill one 1.5L of tap water and rest it overnight before watering the avocado plants. Also, you need to make sure that water drains from the bottom of the pot when watering. Do at least one draining of the water per month. This will keep the browning of the leaves at bay. Another thing that I observed is that the second and third avocado plants have leaves that are drooping instead of leaves spreading out horizontally.

Planting avocado seedling - My 4th and 5th avocado plants

Following my posts in this blog and SG My Garden Is Good blog, you can tell when the avocado seedlings need to be planted into the soil. But I have seen in the internet that people use just water and the plants grow quite well.

The first avocado seedling that I have planted last year did not make it because I have missed the time to plant it. But wait, maybe it is because I have planted it in the soil that makes it worse and it becomes very small. Or maybe I have planted it into a recycle bottle instead of a proper pot. There are many reasons why the first avocado seedling did not survive. So, lessons learnt. Now I plant my seedlings into proper pots and plant them when they have at least 5 leaves and ready for pruning. However, I don't prune them until they are planted into the soil for a couple of weeks or so.

It is Chinese New Year now and noticed that the second day of Chinese New Year is a good day to plant my 4th and 5th avocado plants. I do not want to wait further because the seedlings may miss the time for planting (that was what I thought).

When I planted my 4th and 5th seedlings, I realized that the 2nd and 3rd seedlings have leaves that turned brown at the tip. I was shocked and quickly googled and found the reason for this. Well, again it could be due to few reasons. The browning of the leaf tip may be due to salt accumulation and under watering. I noticed that for a few times, I had used water directly from the tap without letting the water staged overnight. Could it be due to the Chlorine in the water? I'm not sure and now, I let the water staged overnight or at least for a few hours before I water the plant.

Leaf tip turning brown

Yesterday, I poured 1.5litres of water into the pots for 2nd and 3rd seedlings. I let the water ran out of the pots and waited till no drop came out from the bottom of the pots. I was trying to flush out the salts accumulated in the soil and hopefully this would remove them. I will monitor for a few weeks to see whether this will improve the leaves browning situation. I will water the plant every two days and to make sure that excess water drips out from the bottom and not to let any water stays in the bottom tray.

After two weeks, I will update whether this method works. Stay tuned!