African Violelt Babies

I've recently had some luck at propagating AVs (my first time, too!), and I found out that one leaf usually grows into more than one baby plant. At what point do you separate the plants? One book said to do it when it is managable. That is really ambiguous to me! Anyone have any better suggestions? The biggest baby leaves now are probably only 1.5 cm, when the adult leaves are about 3-4 cm across... I can see several places where new baby leaves are growing, but I don't know yet how many plants there are. Thanks for any advice!

--Dana

I usually leave them as is until a few weeks after it looks like it's stopped producing new babies. It's easy to tell with some because it'll become obvious that you have X many babies and the newest leaves will start coming up from the center of each baby. With others, you just guess. The bigger they get, the easier they are to handle and the better they'll do after separation (bigger leaves, more roots). For me, this usually means that I have to be patient for as long as possible, and then lazy for a little while on top of that.

Okay, patient and then lazy... Words I can identify with! There's still a plethora of new leaves coming, so I guess I'll be patient a bit first of all until the different plants become more defined. It makes sense to let them grow and establish themselves as much as possible. Thanks for the advice!

--Dana

I agree with Keyring, Dana! It's hard at first....growing babies is such fun, and one often finds oneself lurking and staring...lol. If you do let the babies' "births" get established, I often find that the mother leaf with start looking less healthy as the babies get bigger and healthier in appearance, lending to the appropriate time to chop it. I have a leave-it-alone shelf in my growing area that has all of the baby plants, just sitting there unbothered. Best thing to do, and then one day you'll check on them, and voila! Progress!

I'd approximate that some leaves can take as long as 2 months before needing to be separated, and their babies looking like mini plants already.

=) Kathleen

Is is possible to wait to long to separate them? The leaves are already getting crowded. If I wait too long will one plant out-compete the others?

I've never had that problem in the sense that the youngest or weakest die off - they're not competitive as some seedlings, You can expect a range of sizes among the babies. I have sometimes managed to pull apart one big baby and leave the others attached to the mother leaf, but often this is difficult to do without removing the little ones as well.

I should mention that I haven't propagated any with extra large frilly leaves, and I can imagine that space might be an issue for some of those hybrids. I have done a lot of standard and mini AVs and they've been fine, even if a little crowded.

Hiya danak,
You can try to pull off the largest babies and pot them up in a small 2 in pot or 2oz drink cup. If smaller babies are attached to it that's ok they will probable just grow on with the bigger baby.Then later you can seperate them...
I have great luck doing that myself.
The problem I have had with leaving them crowded is watering them and fertilizing them with out over doing the smaller ones in & yet still giving the bigger ones enough.

You might try adding some Super Thrive Vitamins about a week or so after you transplant them. I've used it and am very pleased with it.

Good luck with your babies.
Lottie