Transcription
Hey everyone, welcome back to my YouTube channel. My name is Titus. Now, in this video, I'm here to talk about avocado care tips. If you guys have been following my previous two videos, I've just been talking about the avocado, how to grow it, and things like that. For this video, what I really wanted to talk about is how to actually care for your avocado plant. And this is one of the first avocados that I have grown, and as you can see, it's very luscious; it's growing really, really well. So let's get straight into it.
So the first thing that I want to talk about is in relation to soil and potting mix. Now, when you are looking after an avocado indoor plant, you want to make sure that that soil is actually well-draining and always moist to make sure that it's well-hydrated, but not drenched enough that the roots will actually rot. Now, depending on how big you want your avocado to get, you might pot it in a bigger pot. Otherwise, if you want it to just stay small, then you may just keep it in a small pot. You'll technically get a feeling whether or not you need to repot your avocado once it stops growing. But if it does keep growing like this one, then you know that this pot size is actually quite good for it still. Otherwise, if you don't want it to grow as tall, you can always prune it back, but I'll talk about that perhaps later on.
Now, if you ever plan to repot your avocado plant, make sure that you do it during spring so that it actually doesn't cause a lot of damage or distress to the plant. You can also make sure that the soil is well-aerated by actually poking holes through it. And sometimes I just have a little chopstick—where is it? I don't really have it here—but I have a little chopstick that I used just to poke through to the soil, obviously making sure you don't poke through the roots, but just poking through it to make sure that there's a lot of air that's coming through it as well. In this potting mix, I've had a lot of pearlite there; it's probably like one-third to make sure that there's really good well-draining soil there.
Now, the next thing I want to talk about is in relation to watering. Now, make sure that you don't overwater your avocado. Technically, the avocado plant will actually tell you once it needs a bit of a drink by actually wilting. And that's a good feature that this plant actually has amongst other plants that actually do that, because if it starts to wilt and also its leaves stop becoming that—um, not crunchy, but more so bouncy type of feel—then you know that it's time to actually water this. And you can actually see a dramatic change from it wilting and after you water it, how it then starts to flourish and also go up—well, the leaves go up, I mean. So as you can see here, the leaves are actually up at the moment. Um, sometimes when it's really sunny in the middle of the day, they may start to look a bit wilty, but if these bottom leaves are still quite bouncy and also isn't wilting, then that's actually quite normal because these aren't actually as hydrated. Um, that's what I'm going to talk about misting them later on. When I water, I usually um soak the water all the way through and leave it outside for like an hour or two just so it can get a bit of fresh air and its leaves won't burn. And I'll talk about lighting later on. If you do leave it outside, you're making sure that the water is actually draining out properly.
Now, the next thing I'm going to talk about is misting. Now, amongst other plants that are actually in tropical regions, a lot of those plants thrive in humidity, and avocado is one of those plants. Now, if you don't mist your avocado plant, what you'll notice is it might start to have—and I might show you guys—it will start to have browning on the edges of some of the leaves and eventually actually make a um brown crusted leaf, which will then prompt you to prune it. But if you actually mist this—and they love a real good soak mist, especially early in the morning and maybe late at night—because here in Melbourne, in Australia, where we're living, the air can be quite dry, especially if you're indoor, if you have a heater or air conditioning on. So you want to make sure that it's well-misted and moist so that it can look as healthy as it can. If you're putting your avocado right next to a window where it gets direct sunlight, just make sure that you don't mist during midday, otherwise it might actually burn the leaves when those water actually heat up, and you might see like little patches of leaf burn there. So try not to mist in the middle of the day, especially during summer as well.
All right, let's talk about fertilizing. So as you guys can see, this avocado is just a baby plant; it's only under one year old. But what I've been feeding it is liquid fertilizer. Now, you have to be careful when you're fertilizing your plant. If you don't give it organic—for example, manure or maybe your leftover vegetable or fruit cuttings—or using those non-organic fertilizers, then it could potentially burn the roots. What I've been using so far to fertilize this is just a seaweed fertilizer that's in liquid form because often times when they're diluted, they're less potent, and there's less likelihood of the roots burning. After I water it first and then give that liquid fertilizer.
Now, with lighting. Now, coincidentally, I have placed this right next to a window that's getting direct sunlight. So if we were to talk about direct sunlight, I think that would be a north-facing window, um, and I didn't know at the time whether or not these avocado leaves would tolerate it, but luckily enough it was during winter time, and I think there is less ultraviolet rays that's really penetrating through during winter in our atmosphere, and therefore this avocado has actually thrived really, really well. I have done a little bit of reading online and also research, and apparently avocados do like direct sunlight. However, if you are growing it from a seed, just be aware that those tiny little leaves will actually burn if you put them in direct light. Now, as you can see here, um, it might look like it's growing quite well even though it's in direct sunlight, but I've actually had to prune off specific leaves that I thought were not as aesthetically nice-looking, um, just to keep that luscious foliage look on it, um, because it actually burnt from direct sunlight. So just make sure that if you are ever growing an avocado from a seed that you're not putting it in direct sunlight straight away to allow the leaves to actually adjust to that sunlight. Now we'll see how it goes in summer. As you can see here—or you can't really see—I'm still in our current rental place, and we still haven't moved yet, um, but hopefully when we do move, it will actually adjust into that new area, so we'll see.
All right, the next thing I want to talk about is in relation to temperature. Now, like what I said before, because these plants or trees are actually grown in subtropical regions, and I've been reading, um, that apparently it comes from either Central and South America, that it actually prefers warmer temperatures. So I've noticed that if you're indoor, and especially during winter, if you have a heater on during the night time, that it—it's actually thriving. However, I'm not really sure how it will do if it's outside and it's frosty. Now, luckily enough, we don't have snow here, and I don't think I'd want that anyway. But this avocado has been growing during winter. In fact, I think from here—I don't even know if you can see—from here to here it's actually—um, no, maybe here—less from here to here, or maybe there—I don't even know—from here to here was actually the winter growth of this plant. So as you can see, it's not doing too bad, but we'll see how it goes in summer. At the bottom there, as you can see, it's probably straight now, but I've been pruning the leaves as it grows taller so that I can get that bushier, fuller lateral growth. And perhaps once I reach that height that I really want, then I'm going to start to cut that tip apex off so that it can start getting even more bushier down the bottom.
All right, the last thing I want to talk about is in relation to pest control. Now, the very, very, very first avocado that I've actually successfully grown in the seed, I've put outside because usually plants when outside thrive and they grow really, really well. However, that first plant actually got attacked by several pests. Okay, number one: birds. Okay, I don't know if they—they're considered as pests—but what ultimately killed that first avocado plant I had was a bird actually pecking through that baby seedling, and then I don't know—peeling off that top bit. And basically, if you're looking at it from here, whilst it's still at that stage, okay, the bird actually pecked off those first foliage and literally cut it off, so the avocado didn't survive; it died when it was still alive and those baby leaves were coming out. Some of the other pests that were actually attacking it were caterpillars. So typically with caterpillars, if you do notice them, um, how you would actually check is if there's crunch bites on the leaves, okay, and then underneath it, if there's any white dots which could potentially be caterpillar eggs, then you want to actually get rid of that manually as best as possible. Try not to use pesticides because it can also damage plants as well. And then the other ones could also be thrips; there could also perhaps be fungus gnats as well. So I had fungus gnats issue with all my indoor plants literally, but this avocado plant used to—whenever I water it—used to give off so many fungus gnats flying off it. Now I've tried this other product, and I might talk about, you know, dealing with fungus gnats in another video, but basically I tried this product that I sprayed on top of the soil, and literally after five days it killed all that fungus gnats, and I hope all that eggs also came along with it, um, but yeah, they're a real, real hard pest to get rid of sometimes, especially for indoor plants. And that's about it. So I hope that you guys found this video useful. If you have, then please click that like button. If you want to see me make more videos, then please click that subscribe button. I am planning to actually convert this channel to a plant channel purely because I'm starting to love plants more and more as we, you know, continue this lockdown that's happening, especially here in Victoria, Australia, at the moment. So I hope to see you guys on the next video. Until then, goodbye, and God bless.