Hey Frank, Congratulations, I know how you must feel, it's sort of like being a father for the first time and seeing your offspring come into the world. My only problem with that is that at this point in life I feel like Nadia Sulleman except that I have more than 8 babies to care for. Enjoy you are doing very well. Fred in NJ

This topic of pot size comes up often with new growers. It has been talked about in great detail in older posts, which can be found by typing in "3 times the diameter" in the search feature. Or a similar query, such as "pot size." Here is a portion of an older post from Irina, one of the experts who grew and showed lots of violets and posted here for many year: ... this 1:3 ratio is for balanced look and show judging. It is only if you have way too big of a pot, heavy soil and water it too much - it gets detrimental to the plant. If you have a plant which is more than 3 times a pot - and we all do - eventually roots will take all the space and it will feel better in a bigger pot. Or if you do not want to grow a huge one - you are supposed to repot your plant every 6 months or so, remove the lower leaves, cut off the bottom of the root ball and pot it in a fresh pot of the same size. And again - if you have suckers all around your plant - it is not harmful. Just not very orderly and you loose the symmetry of the plant. Your plants look very happy and fresh for now - but you would need to take the suckers out and pot them separately - otherwise they would look very unruly together." In the same thread, another person noted that plants in too large a pot will risk getting root rot or sour soil. In my experience, when I used to over-pot, not knowing any better, the plants never bloomed, they spent all their time growing roots and leaves. If the plant looked "too tight" I moved to a bigger pot and got even bigger leaves and fewer blooms. Then once I started reading the forum and back threads and followed the advice, the plants all bloomed. I used to post photos on the Gallery of 15 or 20 or more plants all blooming at the same time in smaller pots. Great advice, Anne. What might be convincing to a new grower is to take the plant out of the pot and see how tiny the roots are in comparison with the leaves. Which means they do not need much pot space. Part of the culture of raising AVs is to learn what they like and try it out. Also, because they don't need a whole lot of pot and potting mix relative to the size of their foliage, they make pleasing displays and don't take up too much space. While sometimes people will start a leaf out in a slightly too-large pot, the leaf might develop 3 or 4 or more babies. Once those are separated, they should go into their own very small individual containers. The plants bloom seasonally. If they bloomed in the winter, then they take a rest of a few months before they will bloom again in late spring. Although this is a long post, maybe one of the other newer growers on the forum might also find it useful. Because when I first started growing AVs, it just seemed counter-intuitive to cramp them and not water too often. The exact opposite of what I would do with other types of flowering plants.

Velleta ! WOW! You went from despair and throwing in the towel to ENABLER Extraordinary!!!! You hooked dbarron!!! And I have a feeling he is more tickled than he is letting on! You go girl! And that is a beautiful flower dbarron! (might want to put ice on that arm and get ready for round 2!) Hmmmm,,,,let's see, what IS your favorite color and will you look for that next??? hehe. Just let us know and the peanut gallery will be there to cheer you on!!!!!!!!!!! And it is not about "preferring" one over the other. There is always room for one more! And you can't get "Smooched" any better than that!!! Awww, and just remember,,,,violets are like potato chips. Betcha can't have just one! Congrats!!!! Rosie

Those "speckles" you are missing are called fantasy. Violets propagated from a 'true' blooming variety are not necessarily going to have the fantasy of the parent plant. It is something one learns to expect: put a leaf down from a fantasy variety, grow out almost every resulting baby plantlet to bloom size to make sure one ends up with some fantasy plants - and they likely won't all be. I have had a plain Funambule in my collection that I got as an unblooming starter plant - just a risk of the game. I kept it awhile just because it was such a nicely shaped AV. But it really was not the true variety and I did not pass it along to anyone. If it does not have the fantasy, it will not gain it at some point. And leaves set from the plain plant will not produce fantasy plants. So what you bought was not necessarily mismarked, you see. If you want to buy a plant in bloom to be sure of what you are buying, it will cost you much more of course. If you like the blooms on your plain janes, then enjoy them. If your heart was set on the true description of the named variety, it is OK to compost plants and replace them - or find someone who has no worries about it being plain and will enjoy it just for pretty blooms anyway. Just don't give them the names - as they are not so.