One more question. Any pictures of what to expect when I pull it out of the pot would be appreciated. Will the crowns be easy to pull off of the momma plant? Will they have roots?

Kim,
I like your plant and your pot both very much. However, I think it might be easier to get your violets going in a different type of pot. Some day when you have a big plant, you try it in that one, if you still would like to use it.

Do you have any plastic pots? 4" should be about right for the main plant and somewhere between 2-1/2" to 3" for the suckers. You may as well set some leaves too.

Unless you have an unusually good source, you will need to add perlite to any soil to may find locally (perhaps someone can help since this search has plagued me for some time). Almost everything I could find was Miracle-Gro or owned by the same company and the quality is not very good.

Once you have your pots, soil and plant, take it out of the pot. I loosen them with a knife and they will come right out. You don't want it wet or extremely dry when you do this.

Then really take a good look at the base and you should be able to see the crown (center of the main plant and which leaves are growing from it. Then you can identify the suckers or side shoots which are the ones that don't belong to the main center.

Start by trying to pull off that big side shoot/sucker. It may be a seperate plant. If you can't pull it apart, you will have to get a sharp, clean knife and work it gently between it and the main plant until it is free. If you get a good root system with it, you may be able to put it in a 3" pot. If not many roots come, you have a couple of options and I hope someone else will cover those.

Other suckers may be growing from the main plant and you will need to see where they are attached and pry them off, damaging the main plant as little as possible. The goal is to get at the base of the sucker and remove it in one piece (doesn't happen much for me). You can try such things as a nutpick, a large blunt needle, rounded end tweezers, etc. These will have no roots and you can root them in your perlite and then pot them into soil later.

I hope that is a start. I do suggest you set the leaves since you can do it in the perlite alone and you will have the leaves and the perlite :).

Now someone else needs to fill in the gaps because I know I left some and I can't type any more.

Best of luck with your pretty plant. (I feel lost on the succulent forum too!)

Diana in PA

Thank you, Diane!

I love this pot, too. As silly as it sounds, it has sentimental value. I started my fist Jade baby in it and have used it for several plants since. I have a Prayer Plant that has outgrown its 4" pot, so I can use this one for it.

I have TONS of 4" plastic pots from buying annuals for my garden. However, (and this may just be me being picky), I don't really like the look of plastic pots. For me, a big part of the fun of having houseplants is the pots I put them in. Can we compromise and I'll put it in a 4" terracotta? Obviously, I want what's best for my AV, so if plastic pots are the best I'll use one.

You're right. It's Miracle Grow AV mix. I'll get some perlite at the store for sure.

I'm a little nervous about breaking off the crowns (or suckers...I can't tell the difference), but I won't be doing it until later this afternoon or evening after I go to the store. So, if anyone wants to chime in and tell me I'm a bad plant mommy, you're not too late! :)

I'll take plenty of pictures and post them.

Hi, Kim,

Welcome to the forum.

Many of the experienced growers will give information about AV culture that is aimed at growing the best possible plant you can, using optimal growing medium, pots, fertilizer, lights, etc. There is not usually just one way, so you have to gather the information and pick what works for you. However, a lot of the wheel has been invented, and some 'standard' practices have developed over the years.

You certainly want to remove the suckers, for they will distort the shape of the mother plant, which is very pretty, by the way. I find it much easier to do this after knocking the plant out of the pot. I use an x-acto knife on larger suckers, and large tweezers on smaller suckers. If there are no roots on the sucker, I remove enough leaves to give me a stub that I can put into my potting mix to root. I do cover them to increase the humidity. I do not use any rooting hormone. If necessary, I will 'stake' it using toothpicks to support it in position.

About pots.....plastic is most frequently used for several reasons. They are cheap, come in an infinite variety of sizes, and they don't absorb fertilizer salts. A general rule of thumb for size is to have the diameter of the pot be 1/3 the diameter of the plant. Try not to get caught up in the idea of having the plant grow into the pot. AVs prefer to be rootbound to bloom their best, so if the pot is too big, they spend all their time trying to fill the pot with roots, instead of blooming. Also, since they are a shallow rooted plant, the use of a 'squatty' pot is better than taller pots. In a worst case scenario, the soil may stay too wet in an oversized pot, and the roots may rot.
Clay pots can be tricky. They absorb water and fertilizer salts will build up on the rim, burning any leaves touching the rim. They can be hard to clean. As the water evaporates through the pores of the pot, cooling occurs and can affect the roots.

Three ounce solo cups with drainage poked in the bottom work well for small plants, leaves, and suckers, and are used by many commercial AV growers too.

A word about potting mix....a sdtandard mix consists of peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite, in equal portions. You will see this referred to as a 1-1-1 mix. There is no commercially available mix of these proportions, unless you buy it from an AV vendor such as Cape Cod Violetry. But, if you can find the ingredients, it's very easy to mix yourself. Or, if you have a mix such as Miracle-gro, add perlite and vermiculite to it, treating it as the peat ingredient. If it has fertilizer in it, don't add fertilizer for about 8-10 weeks.

Good luck, and thanks for posting the pictures.

Barbara

Barbara - -

I think you covered everything. So nice to have you back in the AV consulting business. Hopefully Kim will use your and Diana's know-hows and in no time will post a pic with her gorgeous variegated plant in bloom. I want to see the blooms!!!

Irina

Thank you, Barbara, for filling in the gaps and, esp. for a great explanation of clay pots. It can be done (I never did it) but it's not recommended for african violets.

There may be better terminology, but when I said "crown," I meant the center of the "mother" plant. The suckers are the extra plants growing off it. Of course, they have centers too. Sometimes they don't when I get done removing them :). (You try to get those suckers when they are small.)

Just be gentle with your plant and it should be okay with being potted twice in a few days.

As far as rooting hormone, I never owned any until recently. Some excellent growers have said that it works well on suckers and long necks (not an issue here) but they don't use it on leaf cuttings. I just tried it on a couple of long necks. You don't have to have it to root a sucker though.

As for your decorative pots, one way you can try using them is as a cache pot. That is just a fancy way of saying that you put the plastic pot inside the other pot. I have been trying this but have not been totally successful, although it may be other factors that are the problem. If you were determined to grow an african violet in that pot, I would choose a large-growing variety and transplant it when it got bigger. Nobody recommends this but you can :D. I suppose I should add that I don't think you can show one that way (AVSA) but that's not an issue right now.

I actually like pots made by Novosel which I buy in bulk and reuse better than solo cups, although I use the cups occasionally. If you have good ventilation, it's easier to do the drainage holes by melting them. Some use soldering irons. I use a nail, pliers, and my gas stove. The $ store ones are easier to melt through.

(If you buy vermiculite, you may want to root things in a mix. I use part vermiculite, part perlite. I do cover them for awhile with a baggie, just until they get started.)

Diana in PA

Thanks for all the tips!

The reasoning behind not using a clay pot makes sense to me. I'll use plastic for now and be on the look out for a glazed ceramic one with the right dimensions. I picked up some perlite at Lowe's (along with 6 more plants I didn't need including a lonely AV on the clearance rack just because it wasn't blooming). I'll try remixing the soil and getting those suckers off later tonight. I'd like to give my new AV some good soil, too. There are tiny leaves by the base that I'm guessing are suckers as well.

I'll be sure to take pictures when they bloom! The variegated one has little pink flowers and the other is a mystery!

I'll take pictures of the process tonight. Thank you all!! :)

Yikes! I started the day with one AV and now look what I'm dealing with!

{{gwi:379400}}

I didn't have any vermiculite, but I mixed the soil almost half and half of the African Violet mis soil and perlite. I got suckers off of both the AVs and planted 2 leaves of each. I don't know what I'll do with all of those, but they'll be fun to grow!

Congratulations! You're a fast worker.

BTW, your succulent question saved me from trying to post a photo of a plant for id. It had looked a lot like an aloe but I couldn't see any "teeth" and couldn't find it. It's the same as the one you rescued. Mine was the only living bit of what had been a large plant. It was in my mom's house and she had been dead for 7 years and it looked like it hadn't been watered since (surely it didn't quite make it that long).

(I don't suppose you'd like to stop by and pot up a bunch of coleus, would you?)

Now we just hope they do well! The odds are good that the Lowes may be some type of Optimara but I don't know about the other one. Sometimes you can make a good guess about the variety from Lowes but often I can't, although at times others did. Some of the rather plain Optimaras can be quite rewarding since they were easy, non-demanding plants that were ready bloomers. (Speaking as someone who discarded some of her Lowe's noids and sometimes regrets it!)

Optimara does have a group of variegated plants but I don't know if they are currently being distributed. There were at least 2 pink variegates in that group.

Diana in PA

You're right, Diane, the label did say Optimara. I had heard it's easier to get AV's with solid leaves to bloom, so I figured I'd give it a try. The woman in that department claims it is a standard. There were huge standards sitting next to the 4" pots that were blooming, so I'm going to assume she's right. The other one had no label other than to say it was an AV. It came from Stop and Shop. It had pretty pink flowers that almost matched the pink in the leaves. They weren't ruffled or double or anything, but still pretty.

If you were closer, I'd love to play in the dirt! Though, right now I'm pretty busy getting my plants into good soil and pots. Soon it will be time to just leave them be and let them grow. What am I supposed to do then? LOL!

I did abduct my Dad's Jade that he had grown from a cutting I gave him a while back. It needed a good whacking and he needed a water intervention. He had let so much water sit in the tray that there was algae around the bottom of the pot! He claimed it was begging for water. I'm sending him back a stump, a new baby and one of my baby AVs.....WITH detailed instructions, of course. :)

The other variegated AV baby is going to a coworker. He's only two offices over, so I'll be able to monitor. I'll make sure both know to re-pot them in plastic when the time comes. I just wanted them to look nice as gifts when I give them away.

Yeah, that Aloe stumped me too. HD had it labeled as a Misc Cactus, but it looked like a succulent to me! I had never seen one of those before, but the little guy was so cute I had to bring him home. :)

Sorry...DianA, not DianE!