I am thinking that your plant is so grossly overpotted and the regular potting soil could be way too heavy for the plant - that you really need to repot in a much smaller pot and use light soil. You probably can use the soil you already bought if you add 1/3 of perlite to lighten it up. Forget about bloom. I would remove the buds anyway to conserve the energy. Normally I would say wait a bit for your plant to recover from repotting - but in this case I think immediate intervention is due. And until you do it - keep the soil barely-barely moist. Overpotting and heavy soil is a 100% recipe for a root rot. Whan you pot your plant in a small pot - you can use your pretty one as a cachepot. Good Luck Irina

That is rather hot for AV's but they can take it. Watch closely for mites however as that is an ideal range for them to proliferate while the plant stresses in the heat. If you can keep your temps below 80, your AV's will be happier for it. On the other hand, with temps over 85 degrees and up, if you can keep the plant alive, it does raise the odds that it may sport on you. Possibly to become a chimera, but it's also riskier that it could take root or crown rot and collapse suddenly. So putting down backup leaves to start new babies would be a good idea. Sounds good otherwise. You certainly do not have to pinch the flowers. If the plant is otherwise happy and healthy, you may continue to enjoy them until it exhausts itself but be warned that the crown may die if there is no active growth. To me that's not a big deal because I restart my plants from time to time by leaves or suckers, anyway. If you do not want that to happen, then yes I would suggest removing the flowers and all buds until you have good strong growth with new leaves. A plant /can/ exhaust itself by blooming to death, though that is more common with Streptocarpus than African violets in my personal experience. So you have options! ;)

Wow, you certainly have patience aegis! You are somebody I would normally ask if I was having that problem! You will eventually figure out the combination to that pesky lock, of that I am sure! I recently won a similar war w a couple of non-blooming stinkers that I had. I took mine as a personal challenge and they were either going to bloom or die! I put my two stinker plants (Fantasy Gold and a noid I lovingly refer to as my cabbage plant) and put them under my brightest lights and increased the timer to 14 hours of light from the 12 they had been getting. I then changed from my normal Optimara fert and went back to my old fish emulsion fert (Espoma that I can get from Home Depot) which is a little higher in nitrogen. Also, since it is organic I felt comfortable increasing the mix ratio/potency of the fish fert within my wicking reservoirs. All of my plants are on damp river rocks but I made sure that these two plants stayed plenty humid. (After all, I was not about to let two little plants kick my butt.) After 4 weeks of this special regimen, both of these plants gave in! My Fantasy Gold is finally blooming and so is my cabbage plant! I have since placed both of these plants back into regular rotation with regular food and they seem to be doing fine. (In a few days, I will have a few more open blooms on the cabbage plant. Once I do, I will post a pic here.) Maybe somebody will know what it is. I got it as a rescue plant more than a year ago. First I had to save it, then get it to flower.

Something else I did was put my alcohol in a sprayer bottle. Properly labeled of course! That can really get where no Qtip can reach sometimes. If you have an infestation that has turned your plant mostly white with mealy then toss it. But for light infestations,,,,,try alcohol first. I have saved many plants over the years. I don't get it often. Once every few years if that. BUT I will always try to "alcohol" it first and I have never had a "spread" thru my collection. Let us know what happens! Rosie