Hi all,

5 years ago I moved into a house with a huge 70 year old avocado tree. Since then the tree has had much decline and I am afraid I may have made things worse. I am desperate for advice!

The area around the tree was originally covered with grass. It was too difficult to maintain with the amount of leaves and fruit that dropped, so I let the grass die and then had to deal with weeds. I used city mulch and that seemed to keep the leaves at bay. A few years ago before replenishing mulch I decided to instead put a bunch of cardboard down and then mulch. Since then the leaves on my tree have been much more sparse, and the leaves itself have brown tips and look pretty bad. I worry that the cardboard made things worse - making it difficult for moisture to get to the soil and sucking the nitrogen out of the ground.

The cardboard has mostly disintegrated by now, I still have mulch but it has thinned out and weeds are starting up. What should i do?? I feel like I need to amend the soil with compost or manure. Do I just throw that on top of the remaining mulch, do I rake that up and start all over? When I do add compost/mulch - how do i prevent weeds from coming up. Should I do more mulch, or try something else?

Thank you so much for yourhelp. I am hoping it is not too late to help me tree be more healthy and happy.