Blue Bronze Eye of the Tiger Viola?

Last year I planted three types of violas in a corner box that serves as a raised bed on the SW side of our house. I planted Eye of the Tiger: http://plantsdatabase.com/go/57984/index.html
Velour Blue Bronze: http://plantsdatabase.com/go/31639/index.html
And Penny Orchid Frost: http://plantsdatabase.com/go/51514/index.html

I collected seeds and labeled them 'Corner Box Mix'. Now that the violas are blooming, I see many strange crosses, as violas are prone to do. LOL! Here is one that looks much like a cross between Velour Blue Bronze and Eye of the Tiger.

Wow what striation! If you've got the space for cuttings, you could keep these, that's pretty special.

Baa, I've never grown violas from cuttings. How do you do it?

There are two types of cutting you can take and it depends on the state of the plant. Most recommended is basal cuttings but this is a little more involved and you lose your flowers in the middle of summer.

Tip cuttings:

Find a lateral shoot that isn't flowering or has not already flowered (these tend to be hollow and pretty useless), it's ok if it has buds, you just need to nip those off.

Select your shoot and cut it (clean knife as always), it should be cut in the middle of two sets of leaves and so you are left with 2 sets of open leaves and the tip leaves on the cutting.

Pot the cutting up as you would any other plant.

Basal Cuttings:

August - trim the whole plant back so you have some leaves but all the flowered and flowering stems are trimmed back.

Topdress with your usual fertiliser and leave for a month or two, for you it depends when your bad weather makes a start, might be worth doing it now or moving the whole plant under glass when the season ends.

New growth will begin to appear, take your knife and cut a healthy shoot right from the base of the plant and pot up as normal.

Layering:

Easiest of all but slow. find a lateral shoot with no flowers and lay it out from the plant.

You can either peg it into the soil, hold it how with a stone or cover part of the stem with soil and in a couple of months little roots form on the stem making a separate plant.

Once the roots have formed, cut it away from the parent plant

With pansies layering is the most effective form of vegetative propagation but unless the plant is large it only creates a couple of new plants.

Mother's favoured method is layering because it's a very quick method to just cover part of the stem and there's no pots of babies needing to be cared for

Thanks, Baa. I will give all these methods a try. I suppose it is purely an exercise in learning, since our violas seldom live over a winter, but I'd like to give it a try. I have about 1500 viola plants to practice on! LOL! I've been throwing them into the compost pile, and the poor little things keep blooming out the sides.

Weezin', I love their little faces. 1500 violas!! and all the rest of the flowers you've shown us! I sit in awe.

We really are going to have to arrange a trek to Seward. Imagine what the townsfolk would think if we all showed up at the same time. LOL Keep those pics coming.

Poor little Seward... by the time folks came out of their houses to look around, there wouldn't be a seed pod or a sucker left in their gardens! LOL! I'm sure you'd find our neck of the woods pretty interesting, though perhaps not a showy as you might think in my gardens. I take pictures of the plants that are looking good, but you don't see the sad little fellows!

I have a little nursery business, and this year I decided to try several different varieties of violas and pansies... over 40, it seems. By the time you transplant all that, it adds up to about a hundred flats of violas. I've sold a lot and I've given alot away, and I've thrown a lot in the compost. It breaks my heart, but they don't winter over here very often. It's a gamble.

This little fellow is one of the cross overs, and I thought the combo was wonderful. Next year, I plan to mix Eye of the Tiger with several other types and see what I get. The deep whisker veining seems to prevail in them.

It occurs to me that I should offer violas for plant trades next year, since they are often perennial in other areas.