I have a lot of blooms and my question is. Should the dead blooms be removed or left alone? Also seems to be lots of leaves, in the past I have removed them but it seems that it takes forever for the plant to look balanced. How many leaves and from what area on the plant should they be removed?
Thanks
Question on African Violets.
I'll answer the bloom part - I remove the dead flowers once all of the flowers on that stem have died. They will usually just pop off when slightly pulled. If not - DON'T pull harder! Just clip it.
I'll leave the leaf question for someone else.
GG
I remove spent blooms as soon as I see them- there is a good reason for doing that, but I can't recall what it is. Some one w/ more experience and knowledge than I have will tell you why.
When you remove leaves I suggest that you look at the overall plant - you would like to (though not always possible) maintain a balanced look. Start by removing unattractive leaves. If the plant has leaves that are really tight in the center, remove some of them. If you want to put some of them down to propagate you want to look for leaves that are healthy in appearance, not too old, not too young- though I have had success w/ old leaves that I have picked off because they weren't attractive. As far as how many, you can take as many or few as you like- it's sort of a matter of personal preferance. That's my 1 1/2 cents worth. Again someone w/ more experience and greater knowledge (and there are many of them on this forum) will give you better answers.
Good luck.
I believe that robsviolet.com has a page on grooming AVs - including removing leaves. I think it was written for show plants but the advice (as I recall) was good.
for the home, though, bascially remove leaves that are old and looking limp (mostly from the outer circle). Sometimes you get leaves facing the wrong way, and you can remove those too if you want - this would be obvious on plants that grow neat round rosettes. Having lots of leaves means there's more energy for the plant to turn into flowers, so overall it's a good thing.