I got some I got some I got some !!!!!!!!!! I am sooooooooo excited! I just happened to check my leaf cuttings from March (?) and there are plantlets forming on the survivors!!!!!!!!! I am so excited!!! I did what Rob's violets website told me to do and it actually worked! Imagine that! LOL! I have really bad luck with cuttings for some reason so I wasn't sure they would make it.
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Heather (now if only i can get the plants I saved to flower.....)
PLANTLETS
Wooohoooo! Way to go, Heather!!
What an exciting moment, to be sure!
Save me a baby! I have your name on a couple of little plants that are coming along nicely.....
These are not Maine -- I am waiting patiently for them-- these are some leaves from my Grandfather's house of plants my aunt was taking back to Virgina with her-- I took a couple leaves off each plant and now I have babies. One is a dark purple ruffled one ( and I mean the flower is ruffled and looks like a double?) one is white, and then there are some mystery plants... I also have about 5 mystery PLANTS that i am waiting not so patiently for them to flower.....
Heather
Congrats! Just in time for the leaf/plantlet tradin we are going to have..:)
Don't ya just love Av's they are so easy to propagate and so pretty.
MsC
oooh, a dark purple ruffled one..... :-)
I think I am particularly enchanted by 'Maine' because of the picture of your precious daughter holding it so tightly!
Mystery plants are fun.... I finally got a flower from a violet I grew from a leaf my MIL gave me. The plant has such gorgeous, red-backed, cream & pink variegated foliage that we haven't minded its lack of flowers, but of course we were curious. It turned out to be a single flower, but in a luscious pale magenta-pink shade.
Here it is!
This one has the biggest best and MOST babies -- the others have smaller ones and are taking longet-- but are working on it.. NOW WHAT??? The pic on Rob's is sooo small - how do I know when to remove them from mama? This one is my white AV.
I let mine get fairly large before separating the plantlets, until the leaves about fill the cup & start to really crowd one another. You may also be able to use the same mother leaf to get more plantlets if it's still in good condition, but it seems to take longer the second time and produce fewer babies, so if I have a full sized plant I generally just get a new leaf.
When it's time, you can pop out all the plantlets together, then gently separate the roots, trying to retain as many rootlets as possible on the individual plantlets. Even if a plantlet loses most of its roots during this process, it can still do just fine if you treat it like a sucker (pot it up, firm the base in well with moist potting mix, put in high humidity environment).
Those little AV babies look GREAT!
I don't know if other people do this or not, but it works for me: sometimes when I separate the babies, I end up with the mother leaf still having roots on it (of course the priority is to make sure the plantlets have the roots). When this happens and I repot the leaf, I've had great luck getting more babies-- they come quickly, and I'm getting three plantlets each on the two I've done most recently!
I usually take the plantlets off when I feel comfortable handling them-- a rule of thumb I've heard is when leaves are dime-sized. I mostly have minis, though, so I do it when the leaves are smaller, but I definitely wait until there are several leaves, the plant is well established, and I feel like it will do well without the mother leaf. I take the whole bunch out of the dirt and expose the roots so I can make sure I'm dividing them up between the plantlets. Kind of subjective as to when to do it-- just wait as long as you can resist! :)
Good description, Dana! Sounds like we've had differing luck reusing the mother leaves... no harm in trying it, though!
I haven't had as much luck when I cut the mother leaf off and start over. It works much better when it already has some roots on it-- new plantlets in a couple of weeks!
Thanks for the tip -- I won't toss out a mother leaf with roots!
Let me know how it works for you, or anyone else who has tried it! I'm certainly a novice at all this, but I like to maximize the plantlets I get from a leaf, and that's a trick that has worked for me...
I've had pretty good luck in the past getting more than one go from my leafs too Dana. My only problem is what to do with all of them once I have them...lol there is only so much room.lol
I've experimented with a variety of ways and Av's are soo willing to grow for me.I've grown them in soiless mix,rooted them in water and even grown them in spaghnum moss & water. Today I found 2 lil lone Av's growing in a discarded plastic cookie tray I left out on the patio over winter! :) Now I wonder who they are????
I have some Av seeds to put down to but I generally have no luck with seeds so I'm not counting on them.But wish me luck!
MsC
Oh, good luck with the seeds, MsC!
I found a plantlet in the wet gravel at the bottom of my terrarium (re-purposed fish tank with shelves for my AV leaves & babies). No idea what variety it could be, but it made me think that I may be missing out on an ideal rooting environment..... Well, if I run out of room, I'll just start sticking leaves in the gravel! Possibly with labels, because I am just like that!
My neighbor asked me today how to plant African Vioilet leaves he rooted in water and I couldn't tell him. He said there are little roots on each leaf, but he doesn't know how deep to plant them. What should I tell him? Maybe I haven't asked enough, so if there is anything else he should know, tell me and I'll relay it to him. Thanks.
I'd put them nearly up to the base of the leaf. If there's a long stem on the leaf, it may take a little longer for plantlets to appear, but they will come along. Cutting off the tip of the leaf with a sharp knife may speed propagation (keeps the leaf from putting energy into its own growth). Good luck to him!
I've done several different ways with the leafs rooted in water.
He can continue to grow them in water and babies will sprout in the water.Then he can add a bit of potting soil & perlite to the water mixture to help establish the babies as soil grown plants.
or
He can do as CritterO stated, but I never plant my leafs lower than 1/8th of an inch or so. The babies pop right up. I agree cutting the tip/point of the leaf off does speed things up, too.
Hope that helps some.
MsC
MsC, do you think could you take a leaf with a long stem that had rooted at the tip (in water) and pot it up shallowly so that most of the stem stuck up out of the potting medium? I guess I was assuming that the longer stem would just mean you'd put more stem under the soil surface, but there's no reason the leaf couldn't be sticking way up....
You know, I had no idea plantlets would form in water.... that would be cool to see.
Yes, the further down you place the stem the longer it takes for the babies to pop up. If your leaf is very long and you need the space then you can trim it to a shorter length, but I try to leave mine long so I can use it over again. Now, the only ones that give me trouble are the very thin stem varieties. They dont want to stand up...so those I do cut shorter.
Water babies are neat to watch, they do take a bit of work when transplanting them over into potting mix. I have a pic somewhere of the ones I did last year. I look for it & post it for you.
The important thing is if you have a way that works for you then that's what I'd stick with. It doesn't matter which method you use as long as you have fun & it's working for you.
MsC
Good point, there, MsC!
Thank you all so much! I've copied all of this and I'm running across the street in just a minute to give it to him. He's been waiting and will pot them as soon as I give it to him. Thanks again. (I hope he gives me one of them.) I have an east window just waiting for one.
MsC, thanks for your post. I've been wondering about those things, too, since it seems like I do things differently from what other people are doing. But I do it exactly like you do (a good person to be resembling!), and for the same reasons. Now I feel assured. :)
Pollyanna, let me know if you're interested in a plantlet or two.... I've always got something started! Maybe we could arrange a trade.... I saw you'd mentioned purple columbine in another post.... :-)
Critterologist, I'd really like to try growing African Violets. My purple columbines are just beginning to go to seed and will be ripe in about a week or two. I'd love to trade with you. I think I'd be getting the better end of the deal, though.
Any chance your purple columbines are big enough to split? If not, I'm happy to trade for seed, and we can always even things up with extra postage. I shipped a couple of boxes First Class (under 13 oz, and takes same amount of time to get there if I mail from the substation), so postage wouldn't be that much more for just a couple of plantlets. Email me, and we'll figure it out. There are pictures of several of my AVs on the leaf trading thread.... I'll check to see what I have that's ready to send out, and if you want something else we can trade down the road. If you're interested in leaves, I can manage leaves from most of mine (not the newest ones from Rob's, as they're still babies, but most of the others I've posted).
I finally found the old pic of the water babies... hope it comes out ok... It's pretty cool to grow them like this.
