Thursday 12 November 2015

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
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 the avocado
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
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.

Leave curling
Leaves curling