try try again.......
after killing my first AV from Rob's in 14 days flat, I have this after 6 months from Hill Country African Violets :)
This message was edited Apr 22, 2010 1:38 PM
If at first you don't succeed ............
what a beauty,we all kill plants at one time or another. lol
mrsbonnie
Yes, we ALL have killed our share of plants! Congrats, she's a beauty! Learn WHY you killed your plants.
She is lovely.Rob has gorgeous plants,but I always have trouble with his potting mix.I think it is designed for greenhouse use.
I'm still learning but Rob's seem to have to much peat, at least for me.
His growing conditions are no doubt much different than yours are. I personally use miracle grow or Pro-mix and equal amount of perlite.
That is a most beautiful AV you have there bayllw.
Has anyone tried ground up Coconut hair with perlite, small pebbles or other medium mixed in ? I just recently repotted 2 of my AVs in ground up Coconut hair with my very small beach pebbles and they seem to love it. the best part is and I'm hoping it's true is that the Coconut hair mix doesn't have any bad bacteria or fungi in it and it's suppose to hold moisture more readily than regular soil. From what I've seen so far the 2 AVs I've repotted using the ground up Coconut hair seem to love it. I water them about every week and half to 2 weeks. However, I do makes sure to check them at least 2 times per week to make sure they aren't dried out out of habit.
Coconut fiber can have a lot of salt so it's important to wash it really well before you use it or buy stuff that is already washed. There is also coconut chunks and my neighbor has tried that and I think she likes it but she goes through this crazy process of washing it multiple times. She also used granite I think.
I completely understand and appreciate the warning. The Coconut Fiber that I've been using is already washed but I did allow it to soak then rinsed it before I used it. It came with a hanging basket setup for growing your own strawberries from seeds (my gift from my husband)
The fiber had been packaged and reduced down to a block form (about 3 inches by 2 inches) that needed to be set in water and allowed to expand over a 20 minute period. After that I squeezed the water out of the fiber then rinsed and squeezed it to make sure I got out anything that may hurt any plants that are potted in the fiber. So far I have 8 baby strawberry plants that are taking their time growing and have been able to use some of the fiber to repot 2 of my AVs without so much as putting too much of a dent into the total amount of Coconut fiber that came with the package.