suckers are what

this is my ness blueberry puff, it has 4 little plants growing at the base of it,how do i take them off,

I'd like to know what to do also. One of the AVs in my terrarium has put out another plant from the base at the side and now that one is almost as large as the original plant. Now it looks like another one coming up. I'm scared to do anything, as I don't want to lose them. They are only NOIDS, but still..............

Diane

It doesn,t matter if it,s a noid are not,i love them,even my bloom is messed up from it ,the bloom is so tiny,guess its not getting what it needs with all the suckers on it

Eunice and Diane,I usually just take a sharp knife and cut down into the soil where the sucker meets the mother plant.Sometimes I get lucky and get alot of roots attached to the sucker.Then I just plop it in its own baby pot and place in a baggie for humidity for a few weeks,then I uncover.Thats how I do it anyway.LOL I am sure others with more experience will know more or perhaps an easier way.This always has been how I have separated suckers from mama and so far it hasn't failed me : )
Nancy

I have absolutely no luck with suckers!!! I can't get em off in 1 piece and if I happen to it dies.
Nancy, I'm not quite understanding what you mean. What if the sucker is above 2 rows of leaves. Would you take the leaves off too when you cut in the soil? Now, in you spare time, run and find one of yours with a sucker and take pics as you cut it out and show us all how to do it!!!! LOL

Debbie

so where are the other AV experts...?

I usually use an xacto knife to cut the sucker out. If you scroll through the sticky thread, I'm sure you'll find tips and instructions. (Here's one: http://www.rachelsreflections.com/suckers.htm)


This message was edited Apr 13, 2007 9:01 AM

I usually just gently push them downward till they pop off or pinch them off. I believe Helen Van Pelt Wilson said it's better to pull than cut, but if cutting works for Nancy and Ki, then it should be fine. I'll go see if I can find that section of the book and type up what HVPW says about it. I'll also see if I've got one that needs suckers removed. Suckers can be caused by underwatering, I've been told, so you KNOW I've got at least a dozen or so that need suckers removed! LOL

Thanks Key and Amy for coming to the rescue.See!!! Thats why I always leave it up to the experts to explain how things are done.I have always had so much trouble expaining how to do things.I know how I do it but to explain it correctly to someone else is always so hard for me.LOL

This message was edited Apr 13, 2007 8:14 AM

OK I was both right and wrong. From Helen Van Pelt Wilson's African-Violet Book, on the subject of suckers she says to "snip or rub them off with standard tweezers or a sharp pencil while they are tiny and their removal will not leave a scar."

Going on, she speaks of multiple crowned plants, "...you can separate the multiple crowns into sections. Pull, don't cut apart, and when a growing unit clings stubbornly and separation will involve cutting, better leave the group as one. Too often cut plants are lost plants." She goes on to indicate cutting can promote fungus growth, but I've never had a fungus problem whether I pinched, pulled, or cut a sucker off. I'd say do whatever is the easiest for you and the least damaging to the plant. Leave the spot where the sucker was taken from uncovered by potting mix til it has fully dried and there shouldn't be a problem, I don't think.

I just went to my first local AV Club meeting yesterday afternoon. Very small group ... only 8 people. Anyway, the lady holding the meeting demonstrated repotting for newbies. Someone donated a plant with lots of suckers (she ended up with 4 plantlets plus mama when done). Anyway, she took the entire plant out of the pot, and gently disentangeled the leaves and gently pulled the sucker plants with roots away and potted them up. The mama plant ended up rootless, so she took a paring knife, scraped the sides of the neck a bit, used a little paint brush (wet with water & then the rooting hormone), painted some of the rooting powder on the neck and potted it up. She had lots of leaves that had come off but didn't pot them.

This lady had some really Beautiful Specimen plants .... really Gorgeous AV's, "Perfect" Rosette shapes and Blooms to die for! I wish I had thought to take my camera! Next month I'm going to take pictures of her Lovely Plants!

Lin


Eunice: I just have to mention .... My very First Strep ... one you sent me called Dilby's Gwen .... Has a Bud!!! I am soooo excited! I can't wait to see the flower!

or dab some fungicide on the cut if it's below soil level. I have a bottle of rose fungicide and use that.

Every year I realize I treat my plants more like humans. (I recently made sure everything got a dose of cal-mag ;-)

Alright, I found one that had 3 suckers and took pictures of how I removed them. I don't know if it would be any more helpful than the descriptions of how to remove them posted above, but if you want to see them, let me know and I'll post them.

Fungicide is one more bottle of something I have to keep up with, so I've never used it. LOL

I have a question regarding plants with lots of Suckers too .... Can you just leave the plant as is and just keep potting it up to a larger pot? Someone at the meeting I went to yesterday said there are some AV's that tend to sucker normally, more than others no matter what growing conditions you have. I have one Optimara 'Annabelle' that grew really strange ... got real tall ( I've never seen anything like this before), it had lots of suckers all over .... I took off all the suckers and potted them up, some didn't survive and 1 small one has rooted, but doesn't look great. Another is growing tall like the mama plant. I don't know if it's a light condition or not. Someone told me it was needing more light ... but it was right under the grow lights. Someone else said maybe too much light, to try taking it out from under the grow lights, so I did and put it on a shelf with just natural light from the window. I think it might be from me crowding my plants ... I have waaay too many plants on each shelf of my stands! But, it's been a couple of months and it hasn't been on the crowded stand and it's still tall. I guess I maybe need to cut it off and repot the crown? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I will try and get a photo so y'all can see what I mean.

Lin

Yes Please, Amy! I would love for you to post them! I NEED Help!

Lin

Yes, as long as you don't have plans to show it, you can leave the suckers and have a very large multi-crowned plant. Some say they won't bloom as well, and they may not, but my EverGrace has lots of crowns and blooms like crazy, so... It may depend on the exact plant, too. If I remember correctly, Jill has trouble with Winnie the Pooh and one other one just suckering like mad.

Again, Helen Van Pelt Wilson touches on this subject in her book. To keep from having to type the whole long paragraph, I'll sum it up in a nutshell. She says if it is your preference to grow a multi-crowned plant, don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't. "If you like them bunchy, have them so," she says. In her opinion, "a large, multiple-crowned plant shifted on to a 5 or 6 inch bulb pan, so that it has adequate root room, can be very handsome and decorative." She restates the point that some cultivars "are almost impossible to keep to single crowns." So if you want to let that Annabelle grow like mad, do so, and I'd love to see it!

I have some plants that reach for the sky even though they're right under the lights, so I can't help you with that. My cultivation of AVs isn't necessarily what you need to follow anyway. I can grow tons of them from leaves and root almost every sucker I get my hands on, but as far as growing a lovely mature plant, I simply cannot do it.

This isn't a great photo, my camera is acting up ... need to charge the batteries. Anyway, I carried them out to the deck to see if I could get better lighting. From left to right: Isabelle (normal size), Annabelle (growing tall), Annabelle sucker (growing tall), Annabelle (normal size).

Any ideas? Am I correct that I should just take this tall plant and cut off and repot the neck? Thanks for any advice!

Lin


edited to say: Isabelle and Annabelle on the left are in the same exact shape and size pot.

This message was edited Apr 13, 2007 10:24 AM

Oh, by the way, I'm certainly not one to be considered an expert at AVs! Nothing I've learned has come easy for me, and the simplest task for someone else with AVs is a nightmare for me. I just can't figure out what my problem is. Propagation is almost too easy for me, but cultivation is nearly impossible. Go figure...

I don't know what you should do with that Annabelle. I think it's kinda neat looking like that, but I'm warped anyway, so who knows. That falls under cultivation, so I'll leave it to someone else...

Here are the pictures I took. Don't know if I captured what you need to see, but maybe it will help.

Here's Starry Night Blue with several suckers (and in need of a good general grooming, too!)

PS Lin, your home looks beautiful! I think I'd rather come spend my vacation at your house! LOL

Here's where the first sucker is attached, just below where I broke a leaf off.

Thanks so much Amy! I don't ever plan to Grow to Show, so maybe I will just let my plants be! I got an Evergrace from Bluebird Greenhouse in January and it was suckering ... I butchered the poor thing ... no suckers survived and the mom plant doesn't look too hot and probably won't survive either! I feel better just leaving them to do what they want to do.

Thanks again for telling us what H. Van Pelt Wilson said in her book! Makes me feel a lot better about my decision to "Let it Be"!!

I just pinch the sucker off (that sounds kinda mean, doesn't it? LOL). I use my thumbnail to "encourage" it if gentle pulling doesn't work.

Here's the sucker!

This is where it was attached. Hey, there's a bud there and I just noticed it when I was cropping the picture to post it! Yay! Hope it lives to bloom...

This is another sucker, with a leaf below it.

I'll use the tip of the knife to gently slice through the sucker. Sometimes I can avoid cutting through the leaf below, but this one got cut off with it. Also, sometimes the sucker will remain attached to the mature leaf below it. I leave that leaf with it when I pot it up.

Here's the sucker and the leaf that came off with it.

This is the spot that sucker was attached to. Once those spots dry, I'll put in some extra potting mix to cover that part of the neck. It should send out roots from there.

Here's what I ended up with. Three suckers and three leaves. (The mom plant still needs more grooming, but I'll catch that later today.) I'll put the suckers down in moist potting mix and put them in a Ziploc baggie to keep them moist for a couple weeks. I usually bury them pretty deep in the potting mix, so that I can just see the center leaves. I don't have any mix made up, or I would put one down and show a picture. I've got to go get some mix ready now!
Usually it's pretty easy to tell when they've rooted as they start to grow like mad. If you just have to see if they've rooted, very gently tug on an outer leaf. You'll feel the resistance if it has rooted. Don't pull too hard, though, or you'll rip off any roots that have started to grow.

This one didn't have any rooted suckers, but the process is basically the same. If you pinch it off, usually the roots come with it. If you cut it off, be sure to only cut through the flesh of the plant so you don't cut the roots off.
Not the best demonstration I've ever seen, but I hope it helps! :o)

thank you,great demonstration,now im ready far surgery,will let you no how it turns out. thanks

ok, i just finished surgery,done really good,only lost 2 suckers got 2 and 2 leaves down and the mama

here,s another one,think my battieres is about dead in camera

Those look great! You did a superb job! That's what I was talking about how I push them way down in the pot. Just be careful watering them. Best to water from the bottom so it doesn't trickle into the crown of the plant, with it being so low in the potting mix.
Please keep us posted on how they do!

ok,another question,do i need to put baggies over them,just wondering with our florida weather.
your instruction was so easy to follow,i printed it all out

I'm glad it helped you! :o)

I don't know about the baggies for you. Humidity in my house right now is 37% and during the winter it drops to 25% sometimes. That's why I put them in baggies - they'd never make it otherwise. If your humidity is high enough, though, you probably wouldn't need to. I don't know what your humidity is (nor what it's like to have such nice humidity, except in the blazing summer when both the temperature and humidity are in the 90s and we're all about to pass out from a heat stroke!), so I'll leave that one up to you. :o)

My NOID that is reproducing itself is in a large terrarium and started out as just a little thing. It's always grown tall even with the great light and humidity it gets. The supposed sucker is as tall as the original plant but not as full yet. The terrarium is pretty deep and I don't want to pull the entire "complex" out of the dirt in order to work on it. What is the other thing AVs do to reproduce besides suckering? Are suckers always off to the side? What would happen if I just leave the whole thing alone? There is another big AV next to the one in question and it grows down low the way it is supposed to, so don't know why this one has always been so tall.

RainGazer--I really appreciate all the time and trouble you went to in showing us how to handle those little things.

Starfly--I am really surprised at how deep you have started things. Has that always worked well for you? If I put my new leaves down into the soil they rot every time. If I leave a stem and just plant that I have much better luck.

Thanks for all the help!!

Diane

Amy: Thanks for the Great Lesson ... it makes it so much easier when I can actually see pictures!

Gardengram: Sure would love to see a picture of that Terrarium of yours with your AV's! I put an AV in my 10gal Terrarium and it began to get moldy, so I had to pull it out. I guess with the lid closed there was just too much humidity for it.

Wow Big Big Thanks Amy!You made it so simple to understand.It would have taken me 3 days just to explain one part of it so people could understand me.LOL You are a great instructor : ))
Nancy

1gardengram thats the way i was toled to root leaves ane it has worked far me every time.if your way workes far you i wouldn,t change a thing,

Yes, starfly. That's one of those "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" things. I'm just surprised to see your suckers and leaves so deep.

I only discovered African violets and their friends in December or January.....Allison gave me both Rachel's Reflections as my primary source of propagation, etc. and Rob's sites for grooming, etc...