Wisconsitom Your right that avocado trees don't need fertilizer. I just thought that some of the things we all know about avocado trees in California could help like leaving the leaf litter and getting use to the wildlife that keep each other in balance around the tree. We are always told not to remove fallen avocado leaves as they need them to be healthy. If he's removing leaves to avoid disease the tree won't get all the nutrition it needs to become a big. Also this tree is a wildlife magnet. The leaves remove toxicity from mammals. In turn creatures warm and fertilize. If they trap and remove the tree will be underfed. Aligater lizards living underneath surface roots aerate and fertilize. I love my alligater lizards. One baby followed me in the house and took me weeks to get him back in the yard. I thought he was a small alligator and embarrassed myself by calling animal control to come get him then telling them to leave Leroy alone once I found out he was safe. Leroy found a crack in the wall, went in there and ate every roach in the building to thank me for winter respite. Id catch him sunning in the window as I woke up. Hed go hide as soon as i got up. When i found out they also prey on baby rats Im determined to always have Whatever animals you have will discover this tree. No poison works on mammals that eat avocado leaves. Loins, hawks, coyote and dogs keep rodents numbers low. Pigeon eat the unwary lizards. One squirrel living in my next door neighbors avocado tree got so use to me that he started bringing his avocado lunch out to a lower branch to dine alfresco as I gathered mine. He would chirp to get my attention then move his little body like he was telling a story.

As a person with PTSD, I definitely appreciate the accuracy of this post's comparison. I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes decorating styles that came from the eighties or earlier. Those cringey little details that people hate? I love them. My fondest dream is to someday own an ugly house that was built between the 60s and 70s and looks like it, burnt orange, harvest gold, and all. I often visualize the confused looks on my neighbors' faces when they see a house that looks like the 70s threw up all over it, hear a random mix of big band, classic rock, and nu metal coming through the windows, and realize their neighbors are - GASP! - Millenials! These daydreams are how I cope with living in an apartment full of beige, beige, and more frickin' beige. That said, even I've got my limits: Carpet in the kitchen. My grandmother (God rest her soul) had her kitchen floor covered in some sort of flat indoor-outdoor carpet in geometric patterns of green, gold, and black...or, at least, I remember the shapes being green, gold and black. It was very old carpet, very rarely vacuumed, and always dirty. Sure, that's bad enough, but you know where the trauma came from? Well, Gran grew up in the South during the Great Depression and came from a dirt-poor family. You never got caught wasting anything around her; she even washed and saved disposable straws for future uses. During one visit with her, I was helping her prepare a modest lunch. (Green beans with butter and garlic, a small burger patty on white bread, and white rice with butter and salt. Yes, heart attacks run in the family.) I turned away for a moment, can't recall why, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the butter fall off the knife halfway to the green beans. It landed right on that nasty, ancient, smelly carpet...but you don't waste food. Gran picked it up with her bare hands, looked it over, and brushed something off. Maybe it was gravel, maybe it was a hair, or even a toenail clipping - all were entirely possible in that house. And - AND! - she tossed it right on the green beans and stirred it in like it was completely normal. I suddenly "got a stomach ache" and went home hungry; after my mother heard the story, she started sending money for us to get takeout so Gran didn't poison me. To this day, the idea of carpet in the kitchen makes me want to sit in a corner, rock, and whimper. Spherical knobs on cabinets. Like stick a marble on a bolt and it's a knob shape. This one's simpler. When I was in fifth grade, my parents bought a fixer-upper dating back to the twenties. It's a beautiful house but as the kid (read "unpaid manual labor assistant") I got a good close look at all the horrors from the renovation. Over twenty years later, I can still recall the obnoxious shiny round 'clown nose red' knobs on the kitchen cabinets...which, by the way, matched the 60s era strawberries-on-butter-yellow wallpaper...so Bozo nose knobs and butter color on the walls, double-whammy. The horror! Wallpaper in general. Sure, I don't mind having paper on the walls, but if there's any possible way, I'm leaving that wallpaper up until I die. I can't stand the wallpaper? I'd almost rather not consider the house. This, too, dates back to that 20s era house. Previous owners, instead of removing the paper and starting over, put layer upon layer of wallpaper and paint on the walls...and it took my parents three rooms of countless layers of painted paper to decide to leave it in place and paint over it. In the half-bath alone, we found about a dozen layers of wallpaper and painted wallpaper dating back to the 20s...and one of those papers had simplistic designs of women in bathtubs, all with beady eyes fixed on the room. I still feel watched anytime I use that bathroom. Lastly, this one is actually literally a PTSD thing. Buildings without a safe room, basement, windowless interior room, external shelter, or other ideal place to take shelter during a tornado. To simplify a too-complicated explanation, in 2011 the apartment building I lived in was in the direct path of an EF-5 tornado and I was home when it hit. The building had the latest in hyper-paranoid fire safety but it had no posted plan for a tornado in the vicinity. My neighbors and I wound up sheltering in the corner of the hallway just yards from several big glass windows and four all-glass doors. Needless to say it wasn't pretty, and most of the buildings in that neighborhood were either flattened or nearly so. I won't go into detail beyond this: our building was brick, and there was non-brick construction obliterated for about half a mile in each direction of us. None of my neighbors were injured or killed. We were so far beyond lucky it's dumbfounding. Ever since then, my first response on entering a new place or checking out a house is "where will we go when s**t hits the fan?" Not if...when. The tornado in 2011 was only the second or third in my city's history; we've had two more smaller tornadic events since 'the big one' and I've lost count of how many "once in a decade/lifetime/generation/millennium" storms have happened since. Missouri isn't known for calm weather, after all. There was such rampant PTSD around here from the tornado (and so many people who ignored the sirens) the city upgraded to new models that test silently. People are finally building safe rooms into most new structures, but it shouldn't have taken that level of destruction. Put your mark on your place - include all the little details you love and ban those you hate - but for the love of Mike, when you're building, buying, or remodeling, seriously ask yourself where you'll go and what you'll do if your region's form of natural disaster happens, and consider whether or not your plans will keep you and your loved ones safe. That got heavy. Here are my cats modeling the latest styles in boxes and bags to lighten the mood. Goldie's sitting in three nested boxes. Those proud cheeks! Skidd just wanted to remind me that he's the present.

Quick update... I gave my Hass 2 gallons a day and he looked better, but not great... I gave him 5 whole freaking gallons a day and he finally started to perk up! WOW he needs A LOT of water right now! I would not have guessed that! The soil drains really well and is designed for citrus/avo... all my other citrus trees are doing great with normal watering habits. It is drizzling his weekend so I'm letting the sky water him today. He's a guzzler!!!!

Hey Everyone! Thanks so much for all of your advice, and input. Apologies for my lack of activity recently. Shortly after I realized the fertilizer is what was killing the tree, I repotted it back to the container it came in, with fresh soil. I continued providing love (grow light, root booster, etc) for a couple more weeks until the entire fre tree was brown. Determined to have a lemon tree, I started 10 seedlings from an organic lemon. A couple weeks later I was at the nursery, and I mentioned my situation to an employee. She said I can bring the tree in and they'll exchange it for a new one. They get their next shipment of citrus trees in November, so I'll swap it then. I'm determined not to make the same mistakes with the new free as I did with the first one. I am going to keep a couple of the new lemon trees, and give the others away once they've matured a bit more. @Sunshine: Thanks for the advice regarding manure. I followed the advice of an employee at a local nursery. I should mention it was composted manure. The pot we chose was not only for decor, but also the size. Advice online suggests a white or light colour pot to keep the roots cool during summer. The pot has a 1" hole in the bottom (similar to terra cotta pots). The only reason I added styrofoam and gravel was to prevent the soil from sitting in water before any extra was able to drain. In hindsight, I realize it was unnecessary. I don't think the pot was a contributing factor to the issues the tree was suffering though. I definitely haven't given up. I'm not discouraged by my learning experience. In the end I'll have even more tree, because if not for this experience I wouldn't have started the seedlings.