Hi,

I have been reading for hours on this website, and I love all the information that is on here. I came here looking for a way to make my avocado plant happy again, but I haven't found a solution yet. So I was hoping someone can help me figure out what the problem is, since right now I am very confused and it could be a number of totally oppposite problems.

I have grown my plant from a pit using the toothpicks and water method (I know now that's not the best way, but it worked :) ). I transferred it to a pot, using regular commercial potting soil, and it continued to grow fine. When fall/winter started the leaves started to droop a bit, some of them turning a bit brown.

I figured it might be the lower temperature and lack of light. My boyfriend has a sort of indoor-greenhouse with a growing lamp where he grows tomatoes and peppers, so i moved the plant over there for a while, in the shade of one of the tomato plants. It seemed to do a bit better and some new leaves started growing, but it also still had brown spots and drooping leaves. No major improvements after about two weeks, so I moved it back to my house. I have been trying to give it as much light as possible, but also to keep it away from the cold window at night. I have tried my best to keep it moist but not saturated.

Over the past two weeks it has gotten worse, more brown spots and drooping, leaves curling up and dropping.

The pictures above I took two days ago. I have been reading about common problems with avocado plants, and i thought it might be excess salts. I have no idea how long it would take for the salts to build up. I think it has been in a pot for only about six months. But I figured it would do no harm to try leaching them out as suggested on this forum.

But at the same time I was very worried it might be root rot. So as there were no improvements today, I decided to take it out of the pot and look at the roots.

I feared it would be a big mess but overall they seemed ok. The soil was not very wet either, just damp, even in the bottom part of the pot. Some small roots were black, so i took them out, and in the process some of the bigger ones that were very intertwined came off as well. After that I repotted it, again in regular soil since it is the only thing I have at hand now. I have only been reading up on potting mixes this evening.

I also took some pictures today, I will post them soon.

So my questions for now:
1. can anyone see from the photos what the problem might be, and what I can do to fix it?
2. I have repotted it today, and pruned some of the roots. So I don't think repotting it in a better soil-mix is a very good idea to do very soon after this, right? I think it might be to much of a shock to repot it again.
3. I have read about using a hydrometer to check moisture levels in the soil, but I can't find information at how much moisture there should be. I think my boyfriend has one of those meters so i will see if i can borrow it.

Thanks a lot for reading all the way to the bottom of this post :) and thanks even more if you can help me make my avocado feel better!

~Amber