avocado watering

I have finally convinced myself of the best practices for watering the poor Avocado plant, from experience. Opinion on this varies widely, from what I read online. Some say that the avocado should be let to dry out completely, then soaked thoroughly until water drains out the bottom. One site even suggested that without this regular soaking the plant would ultimately die. Others suggest consistent moisture. But I have found, from alternating methods in an attempt to make my plant happy, that I agree with neither one.

Too much water seems to make the leaves nice and upright but wavy on the margins, as here when I kept it damp enough that mushrooms grew!

The let-dry-out and then give a heavy soaking method makes mine droop. I realized this just recently when I switched from infrequent soakings back to giving it smaller amounts of water two or three times a week. Maybe a cup or two. The sides of the clay pot dampen, but it doesn't drain out the bottom and have to get emptied (a difficult task anyway with such a large pot). The plant seemed to be doing better and the new leaves looked very healthy. Have quickly grown to almost full-size. Then I forgot one day and gave it more water than had been the norm. Later that day I noticed that the newer top foliage had begun to curl under and droop.

So now it looks like this:

Overall not a happy plant. I am hoping that as I let it dry out a bit more and go once again back to frequent, light waterings that the new foliage will recover but I'm not sure if the older leaves ever will perk up. I'm thinking that when real spring weather arrives I might give this plant an almighty chop- supposedly you can actually remove all the leaves as long as you keep at least a third of the stem. And then let it grow back. We'll see...