Need advice for pruning indoor Avocado saplings

Question

I have four Avocado "trees", which are now approximately 1 - 1,5 years old. I did not prune them until now, because I did not know any better. I have read, that saplings should be reduced by half in height when they reach 20 - 30 cm. Three of mine are already 50 - 60 cm in height.

Now the question is: where do I prune them? Some more information:

• Plant #1 has a branch near the top of the plant, which no other plant has. Plant #1 is also the prettiest of the four, with dark green leaves and also many of them, the pictures do it no justice due to the bad lighting.
• Plant #2 did not grow any new leaves at the top recently, however, all of the leaves are located in the top third of the plant.
• Plant #3 is rather bushy and is currently developing new leaves at the top.
• Plant #4 still is very small (only 35cm), it did not grow for a long time, however, it is now developing leaves again.

All of them will be repotted soon, #2 and #3 are still in their starter "pots". I really appreciate your help and thanks a lot in advance! BR

[

Answer 1

So I pruned my avocados how I thought it would work, back when I made this post (3 months ago). As I did not get any answers, maybe this update will help some of you.

• I simply cut 10cm off of plants 1 to 3 and left plant 4 alone, it was too small' I also repotted them to significantly larger pots, and they are rooting quite quickly. All of the trees made a new leader, and tree 1 even made three equal branches, however, it was the only tree that did not handle the sun well, and right now around half of the leaves are burnt and will fall off soon.
• Trees 2 and 3 each grew an additional branch next to the leader, however, they remained small. In general, each branch grew at least 15cm in 3 months. I also did experiments with seedlings, see trees 5 and 6.
• Tree 5 was around 30cm without any real leaves, I halved it and it grew a new leader.
• Tree 6 was very little, its tip dried up. However, it then grew even two leaders!

They seem to be very resilient. In general, I cannot say if it is worth it, but they seem to handle it well. Tree 5 might be a little smaller now with the leaves developed more, but I cannot see a significant difference for now.

One more piece of info: I live in central Europe and the plants are indoors at a west-facing window, they do not get too much light, maybe 3-5 hours of evening light a day. The plants are all from Hass seeds.

[ [