Am I understanding this right: You got it two weeks ago It doesn't have any brown or pale spots on the leaves Nothing has turned mushy or floppy It's just quit blooming? Sounds like there is no cause for alarm just yet. Your violet is simply expressing some displeasure at being yanked from the comfy warm, humid greenhouse it spent it's adolescence in. As for automatic/wick watering. That's a trickier question. The idea is to leave the plant on the wick all the time. However, you have to pay close attention to how moist the solid is getting. If it feels soaking wet all the time, chances are you need to change to a lighter medium with more perlite (just mentioning that because optimara plants often come potted in rather dense peat mix). You also want to cut your fertilizer to about half the recommended dosage, and use plain water about 1/4 of the time, to account for evaporation). And in top of it all, every so often, you let the reservoir go dry for a day or two, to give the roots some extra air (I think that was the reason anyways). If you do that though, be sure to water from the top afterwards to make sure the wicks get wet again. What you found referred to at 30 minutes a week, was bottom watering, one type of it anyways. You'd put the pot into a bigger dish full of water up to the soil line, let it soak up for a while (15 minutes are recommended I think), then you let it drain completely, and the plant is well watered for a good while. Whichever way you choose to water (and there are plenty to pick from), figure out what works for you. No two environments or plants are exactly alike. Good luck :-) Karin

"I may have to look into this winter sowing in the future." No, no, no, isuhunter. Try this method now. :-) It's fun and easy. It requires no fuss, no heat mat, no grow light and produces tremendous success. You won't regret it. Please give it a try now. It's the prefect time. Welcome to the Winter Sowing forum. Check out the FAQ above. Or here. Welcome to the WS forum. If you need seeds, pls. E-mail me. These plants were WSown without any heat mat, or grow light:

This was posted in a thread today at the Winter Sowing Forum, "Hi folks, Just wanted to stop by and assure you that we are working on these issues. Last week, we launched a new registration tool and there are still some bugs that are being ironed out. I know that it's frustrating and upsetting when things don't work as they should -- I really do feel your pain. Unfortunately, some of these bugs are difficult to recreate because they vary from member to member. What would be enormously helpful would be for you to contact us directly and detail what your issues are. Including information such as a step-by-step overview of your login process, where you are seeing issues, the error messages you are getting and anything else that might have differed from any previous login experiences. Many of you have probably already done this, but please make sure you check your browser settings and make sure that you have cookies enabled. If you would send this information to our contact link below, that would be extremely helpful. If you have specific questions or need something else, you are welcome to email us at the link below or contact me directly at any time -- my email is listed on my profile page. Thank you for your continued patience and support. Best regards, Tamara Amey GardenWeb Community Manager So...guess folks just need to report the log in issues individually if one isn't staying logged in. I'm not seeing any ads here at The KT, and never have seen any on GW until this past week. Now I am seeing them on those forums that are on the 'forums2' servor....ie Seed Exchange, Winter Sowing, etc. Firefox and Adblock has always kept me ad-free so sometime later I'm going to remove both and reinstall them. Sue

Ok now send me the criteria of the swap. If I get it in an email I can save it cause otherwise I'll forget and ask over & over. Ya see I sound sane around here but I'm not!