'Bristol's Party Boy' really making a show now!
Daily Photo Share and Chat - Part II
Hi , i want to share my pride and joy. I bought this little one on sale at Lowes for $1 dollar, it was sick and wiltered, but a lot of TLC and a new pot did wonders. I have it on the windowsil by my desk.
The camera does not do it justice~~~here is another angle
VERY pretty and congratulations on saving it!
I LOVE to hear stories like that. Probably would have ended up in the landfill if you hadn't saved it :) What a GREAT feeling that must be!
Stunning Job!
Hi Dulci: Welcome to DG! You will love it here! That is a Beautiful African Violet! How wonderful that you saved it from Lowes .... great deal at $1.00 too! You've done good by it, and it shows!
Welcome Dulci! This is a great bunch here.
Nice find at Lowe's, and it looks like you gave it the TLC it needed.
Karen
Nice save Dulci! That blue is intense- just beautiful!
Thank you, i have a quick question -up in the thread i saw a leaf with new babies, i'm trying that but is taking a while. Does any one knows how long it takes for a leave to give some babies?
Thnx
~~~~
takes forever!!! just joking---somebody will come along that knows for sure, but it sure seems like forever to me!!
Dulci, I wish I could help but I don't grow African Violets. I CAN tell you that I put down strep leaves on 10/12 and am JUST starting to get babies. I think having the leaf in a dome (to raise humidity) would really help alot :)
Dulci: Sometimes it does take awhile to see those little "ears" peeking above the soil. You have to get roots first from the Mom leaf. If you give it a little gentle tug and feel resistance then you'll know that it has rooted. Babies popping up sometimes take their sweet time! Keep us posted!
I've had some AV leaves that sent up babies in about six weeks...
And I've had two that took four months!
Susan, as far as I know nobody is ever summarily booted from DG. Admin does give warnings and accept apologies and give second chances, etc... I have nospecific knowledge of what happened between Dave and Gail, and I'm not commenting on that... I'm just making a general comment here because I don't want people to worry that they'll make one misstep and find themselves removed from membership here.
Dulci, great save!
And you all are right about leaf babies... some of them seem to take forever! But it's such a triumph when you finally see those little "ears" poke out. :-)
I've read that it usually takes 6-9 months to go from a leaf to blooming plant....but haven't done it myself.
Beautiful colors in that violet Dulci, you've done well! I too have had babies pop up in four to six weeks from an AV leaf but last winter it was more like 4 months!! They weren't under a dome, just growing in a south facing window but they did finally come up! I have my first blooms from the leaves I grew that way happening right now.
Diane the sinningias range in size from micro minis to much bigger! They are very interesting to me right now and I'm just learning about them. The little ones need to be grown in a terrarium but so far I've been able to grow some of the bigger ones, such as Xanadau on the shelves with my AV's etc. I have a small variety of them that I can't wait to see bloom such as this Peridot's Darth Vader....
~Brenda
Karen here is Party Girl from this morning to go with your Party Boy....
edited to say it is so hard for me to catch the beautiful yellow throat in Party Girl, it really does set of the purple....when you can see it!!
~Brenda
This message was edited Nov 26, 2007 10:08 PM
I ordered petrocosmea forrestti because I loved the rosette formation it grew in and because of the furry leaves. I never even knew that it bloomed until after I received it and read up on them!!
Pretty little lavender blooms...... with at least nine more to come. See the new bloom stalks peeking out from under the leaves?
~Brenda
Diane here is another sinningia. There are three sinningia pusilla in this jar with my hand in the picture for size refrence....obviously these are some of the mini's! LOL
~Brenda
Critter,
Thank you for the answer... I heard also about what went on and I really did not want to know about that just to find out the rules here. Like I said one time I lost my toung with someone and it was not all that bad but I should have buttoned my lip... I thought I was a gonner that day.... So thank you for telling me they just don't give you the boot... :-)
Takes my leaves to grow about 3-4 weeks I have a few now doing really great...
Hugs,
Susan
Beautiful ladies! I love looking at your pictures.
I had to sneak in another picture of strep Stephane,shes such a great bloomer.It has 12 flowers on her now and more coming.The most flowers I've ever had at one time.
This is my little cutie sinningia today.I hope I can get seeds from her!
AWWWW Jannich, what LOVELY babies you have!
I love the coloring on both :)
Congratulations!
Bristols sixth scents.
close up of the flower.Love it.
Jannich, does she really smell? If so, what does she smell like?
I am SO fascinated with streps and for some reason they just are not warming up to me quite yet. I will continue to try though :) They will like me whether they like or not *lol*
Oh, what Beautiful Strep's! waaaaaaaah - why don't they like me? :( I have yet to keep one alive in my house! I think it must just be too hot here in Florida .... at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! LOL.
I am loving Sinningia's and in spring hope to get a couple of the larger ones to try. I just love the micro mini S. 'Rio das Pedras' that you gave me Jan! It is sooo cute. And, the S. 'pusilla' I got from RainGazer! I am assuming those two are both micro mini's although the pusilla looks a bit smaller in size than rio das pedras. I just think they look so neat in their little jars/vases and I love the teensy bloom. I had never had a plant so tiny and was so afraid I wouldn't be able to keep something so small alive .... now they are my favorites! I think one of these days I might take everything out of my 10 gal aquarium/terrarium and plant it totally with the micro mini sinningia's.
Well, I need to get back to mowing the lawn ... went out and put gas in the mower and opened the back gate and that's about as far as I got! Started talking to a neighbor and got sidetracked with other stuff. I came in to get my hat and sat down at the computer and look where I am! LOL.
Hope everyone has a Sunshiny, Beautiful Day!
Thanks Kim,
Sixth scents is supposed to have a scent but I don't smell anything,maybe cause its still a young plant? I love streps too.I had a hard time growing streps at first too(killed many!),but I found if I bag them when I first get one and keep them in the bag for a few weeks then open the bag alittle each day,they get used to being at my house.I also wick them.
Now if only I could grow AV's(sigh) but Ikeep trying:)
bmedal- The Petrocosmea reminds me of a 'miniature african violet' I bought last year. I still have it. I'm out of my league here! Are they the same? And from what I understand the Streps are temporary plants (need to be restarted from cuttings) is that right? Are the Sinningias temporaries? Please excuse my ignorance, everyone!This is one of the only types of plants I've not really grown. But only because they're not readily available to me. I can get African Violets NOID but that's it except for the occasional Aeschynanthus.
I have a Petrocosmea that I got as a free plant when I ordered from Rob's Violet's last spring. The one I have is P. barbata. It hasn't bloomed yet ... I need to start feeding it to see if I can get some flowers. I love the way these grow with the rosette formation of the leaves. I need to get mine out of this glass jar and into something where it has more room. It is really cramped. I know I am going to break leaves when I try to get it out ... maybe I will see if I can root the ones that come off during repotting.
Diane: I will be curious to hear the answer to your question too. I have not heard that Strep's or Sinningia's are considered "temporary"? I assumed they lived for many years with the proper care. I know there is some plant that grows, and dies and to keep it going you have to take cuttings but can't remember what plant I'm thinking of. Hope someone comes along to clarify this for both of us!
If I'm remembering right, I think each leaf of a strep will just produce one flower or set of flowers or something like that, but then it will put up a new leaf and keep right on blooming. So older leaves can be removed without reducing the "flower power" of the plant. I've had my 'Iced Amethyst Show-Off' strep for about a year now, and it's much fuller (more flowers and many more leaves), but I don't think any part of the original plant has died.
HHmm... The reason I'd never even ordered Streps online was because I thought they were 'temps'? So I haven been missing out! Gloxinias go dormant I think. Maybe that's what I was thinking of? The mini AV I have I bought at work but the owner won't let me order them very often. As a matter of fact I've worked there for 2yrs and we've only gotten them once.
Diane I've been growing streps for about a year now (love, love, love) and the first I heard about them not having as long a life as an AV does was when threegardners posted that they only live about two years! Maybe she will come and help us out by telling us where she read that information. I have not found any info on their life spans myself.
At the base of each leave is where the flower stems come up from and I've gotten at least 6 stalks from each leave. I only trim a leave off at the base if I want to share it or plant it. Or if it looks really ugly. LOL
So then if the plant has several leaves they can be full of blooms. And each stalk that comes up can have several bloom heads on them. Right now I have one stalk up and there are 7 blooms coming from that one stalk! They do just keep on sending out new leaves if they are happy. I grow mine on a table in front of a window and they like it there. You can trim the ends of the leaves but as long as you don't take the base they keep right on blooming!! For me they have been a very easy plant and I'm thankful for that.
Remember that I am new to them in the past year so I'm no expert! Just going from what I've seen on my own. Here is Bristol's Ribbon Candy that is just full of blooms right now...
~Brenda
This message was edited Nov 27, 2007 10:15 AM
Oh, I am just in AWE with these Beautiful Strep's! I tried growing from a Leaf too but that didn't even work .... leaf rotted. Maybe someday I will figure it out. I do have some seeds that Snowrose sent me that are sprouting. I wonder if they will survive in my house!
I better eat a few more mandarin oranges as I think I'm beginning to turn green with envy *lol* (playing w/you Bren)
How BEAUTIFUL!! Just like you :)
I got off on the strep topic and didn't answer about the petrocosmea. They are not the same as a mini AV Diane. All of these various plants are related and are in the Gesneriads family. They all have their own little personalities but over all I am drawn to them because of the beautiful growth patterns and most especially for the blooms of so many of them.
The Kohlerias (also part of this family) grow from scaly rhizomes and if they are not happy they will die completely back and you think they are goners! :0) But if you continue to water the pot the rhizomes will sprout again and give you a new plant. Maybe that is the one that you were thinking of as temporary? But they're really not as they come back again.
The sinningias grow from a tuber and that tuber will get bigger and bigger and I believe that they too can come back just from the tuber if they die off for some reason. Not positive on that though.........Here is a picture of a sinningia that I'm growing from seed and you can see the little tuber at the base. Fascinating....
~Brenda
Ok Brenda, now I know I've got to have Sinningias! That is just too cute! Thanks for the explanation.
Hi Brenda
Sinningia's are my first love & i do have a great collection so far.I find them so easy to grow.I really like your xanandau. I also have darth vader & am waiting for it to bloom also.
mrsbonnie