Pretty much what Judy said! If the plant itself is already "wiggly" in the pot, just chop it off at the soil line and inspect the stem. remove leaves and cut the stem back bit by bit until there is no more brown to be seen (note, if your leaves have red backs, you will see some color, which isn't rot, but its usually easy to tell the healthy tissue from the squishy stuff once you have both in front of you.) then you can try root what is left of the crown and a bunch of leaves, IME, a lot of the leaves will look fine and then just keel over overnight. if you were ruthless enough with chopping back the crown, it should take. most of the time. I've managed to revive a standard that was cut back to 1" diameter (4 leaves), others looked better and didn't make it.... Good Luck! Karin

Just an update. I decided to pull one out of its pot to see if there was an issue below the surface and was surprised to see how stunted the root structure. No fertilizer burn or root rot that I could see. I pulled all of them at that point and same for each. Repotted all of them, 2 in seed starting mix and 2 in potting mix. In a week one of the ones in the starting mix has opened up and I can see the second set of true leaves coming in (the other unfortunately lost about half it's roots in the transfer, so not a good test example). The ones in the potting mix are showing some signs of growth, but not very much at all. I've come to the conclusion that my problem was using potting soil (Miracle Gro Organic) that compacted when I should have used seed starting mix. My original thought was to use the potting soil in a larger container to minimimze the amount of transplanting I would have to do. Looks like I learned a good lesson about why to start small with seed mix and potting up.

Karin Thanks for answering! My plants die fast if I don't water. My crowns start yellowing when this rot begins nibbling the stem. Surprisingly, the roots and leaves stay fairly healthy for a while. It is a slow eating away of the stem at the soil line. I knew about this black stem rot, probably because of the minerals in this water, when the geraniums started rotting at the soil line a few years ago. I didn't expect it on the African Violets. It wasn't until I actually took a plant apart, scraping away the rot, examining the roots, that I noticed the salt crusts on the pots and on the base of the plants. Something to watch for with very hard water. I thought I had that problem solved by lowering the Ph but that only made the salts accumulation slower. INSV has the stem rot also but I believe that is only spread by thrips and I have never had thrips. I haven't brought any new plants in since September so the plants are very clean right now. No sign of pathogen or insects. Mechanical damage = Salt buildup

I have this plant. It’s leaves will occasionally do this, usually the bottom leaves, and new ones grow from the top. Mine in my sunroom with lots of indirect light, although it’s been a cloudy gloomy winter this year it still looks nice. It’s up close to large north & east facing windows. It has more color with more light, but not in full sun as the leaves can burn. Mine bloomed continually this past summer. Sometimes there can be premature shedding of some of its leaves if kept to wet or if it’s to cold. Make sure the soil drains well and doesn’t stay soggy. I started another from a small stem i accidentally broke off. I’m enclosing pics of mother & baby to show the color. I hope this helps. It’s one of my favorite easy to grow houseplants!