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last updated 03/09/2005 02:46:58 PM |
African Violets My Way: Rachel's Reflections | ||
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Bathing a violet make sure the water is not too hot or too cold. It should be approximately the same temperature as a babies bath. |
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Let the warm water run over each outside leaf, cleaning all the dust from the surface. Rotate the plant as illustrated without letting water get into the crown of the plant. | ||
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If an accident does happen don't panic, just clean it
up. Q-tips or paper towelling rolled to a sharp peak
is great for soaking up the water and finish off with a
couple of hard blows to the center of the plant. Lol, that sounds terrible, and could be classified as plant abuse. I mean blow on the center of your plant to dry it. |
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Wick Watering I am now mainly into wick watering, but when manually watering I would alternate from top to bottom. I never did see much difference in either! You can arrange a nice tray, or water proof basket with a layer of gravel, use enough gravel to to sit the pots up out of the water, and let the wicks do the rest. This serves two purposes, humidity around your violet and it is now self watering. You just do your job and keep the reservoir full. (more on wick watering here) |
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| I am concerned that a lot
of you are leeching because you feel it is the thing to do.
In fact you should only leech when you haven't
re-potted at regular intervals and smell the dreaded
"ammonia" odor when you water your plants. I stress
the fact that you should wait until your plant needs to be
watered or you will be subjecting it to root rot. I find myself leeching often, else I would lose my plants. I cannot always get to them when I should |
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| When you water your plants and you get the
scent of ammonia it would be the time to leech your plant
immediately, and you should plan on repotting before
next watering. Either way I would recommend that you
leech when you smell the ammonia even if you are going
to repot! That odor means your root ball is already in
trouble. African Violets breathe a lot of air through their root systems. Just as the walls in your home gather dirt, grime and grease from cooking odors so do your plants. Also fertilizer salts eventually build up and the root ball will give off a very distinct ammonia odor when watered. I use 1 drop of soap (dishwashing liquid, obviously we do not want a soap that is especially kind to the hands here, we are trying to cleanse, not add to the problem) to 1 litre of water to flush the violets. I water from the top with soapy water, until the water runs through the soil, then sure that the soapy water is right through the plant, I rinse with warm clear water until the water coming out the bottom of the pot looks clear enough to drink. Obviously it would be very wrong to leech a plant that does not need a watering, if it is not ready yet .....wait, until next watering. |
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| ROOT ROT | |||
| Violets can go a great while looking fantastic, and then overnight seem to just let go, develop mushy stems, collapse and appear to be rotting. The distraught owner would insist the plant had been treated the same as always and couldn't understand what went wrong! MY answer to this? Your violet should not have been treated the same as always, it should have been leeched or potted up with fresh soil somewhere along the line, well before it got to this "collapse" point. In actual fact the problem started a good while back and could have been prevented by a leeching or potting in fresh soil. Now the only hope for this plant is that it has a leaf or two still firm enough to root. Toss the rest of it. The most important thing is that you have a couple of good leaves to start anew, and a lesson learned. | |||
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I am always open to constructive suggestions. |
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