Today as I was worrying over the health of my two avocado trees, I realized something.

In the past, I would've posted pictures of my avocado problem on Facebook and asked my friends for help. I've done this many, many times and I've given and received some really helpful solutions. That's one of the things social media is for! Reaching out to other people, sometimes sharing our problems and sometimes sharing our help.

But what Steemit offers is a way to turn social media into a marketplace, an actual economy. And I'm willing to pay for good advice. Why? Because free advice from friends is great, but we don't always have the right people in our friends list to meet those needs. Which is why any economy exists - it allows us to find help from others outside our circle of close personal friends.

In light of this realization, I'm offering 10 SD + SD payout for this post in return for help with a gardening problem.

If more than one person can help me with this problem, I'll split the reward evenly among them. A few policy declarations are needed here: I won't reward guesses, silly or obvious suggestions, etc. and I retain the right to subjectively determine an answer's value to me (because, as I'm fond of saying, all value is subjective). I will decide and announce the winning comment(s) prior to sending the reward. I'm including the baseline 10 SD reward in case this post, itself, doesn't earn enough to create a good payout incentive. Sound good? If so, let's proceed!

First some background on my trees: I live in Orlando, Florida and own two avocado trees in patio pots, a Haas and a bacon. They sit next to each other on my west-facing patio. When these two trees first met they went crazy in each other's presence. Both exploded in new branching and leaves. But in the heat of the summer they began to wilt. I brought them inside during July and August which alleviated the wilting, but they weren't happy inside, either. In early September I put them back outside, and they seemed relieved to return to the outdoor humidity.

I water them almost every day and their pots drain well. I use between 0.5 and 1.0 ml of SuperThrive in their water, which varies between 0.5 and 1 liter per tree. They are recovering and improving, but not to the extent I would expect. Below are my two main concerns:

Above is my bacon. It will put out new leaves that look great, but the ends "fry" up like this. The trees are in a sunny location, but I've tempered that by placing a little palm tree overhead so the fronds filter the sun the avocados get, as it seemed to be the strength of the summer sun that caused them to wilt and burn.

Above is my Haas. I bought it tethered to this stake and haven't re-staked. Are these ribbons causing a problem? Should I re-tie them more loosely? Or would this ever be a problem?

Above is a pulled back view to show the overall environment in which these trees live, and the plants nearby. The avocado trees are in the two large pots at the far left of the picture.

I'm hoping somebody out there will have information about tethering and whether that could be causing a problem, and what is happening to the otherwise healthy leaves that fry and curl and blacken on the tips.

I'm also hoping this posting experiment can be a win-win and a new way to use Steemit! (for me, anyway) If this works, maybe we could come up with a good tag for posts offering payout in exchange for help. For now, I'm using a #helpmarket tag, but please let me know if this is already being done, and if there's already a tag in use!