"I'm a doctor, not a horticulturist, Jim!"

For all those Star Trek fans out there.... What? Am I the only one who watched? This is a question of diagnosis. Just what is going on in this photo?

There are a few things to notice in the picture. First, what are the enlarged green objects in the middle of the flower?

These are pollinated blossoms that are making seeds for this plant. The green pod starts swelling and getting large. These will get just a bit larger and turn a nice shade of tan. The bloom stem won't wither and die back like it usually would after the flowers fade. It will continue to remain upright and not shriveled even though all that's left is a stem with little brown pods.

A violet keeps it's seed head ON the plant and continues ripening for as much as 6 months till the seed is mature and viable. Sometimes it's hard to not accidentally groom off the seed pods, or knock into them when watering or caring for the plant. But, if you want to try to plant the seed it has to be ripened on the mother plant.

Another thing you'll notice about the photo is the damage to the petals of the flower. What's all this about??  It's thrip damage and perhaps a bit of a watering issue with the plant. Thrips are hard to see on light colored blossoms when they are moving about but the damage that they do shows up more readily on the light blossoms. Disbudding and continuing to keep the plant flower-free for a period of months will take care of the problem, as well as the use of some pesticides.

The flowers on this plant were likely pollinated by the insects. Usually a violet doesn't self pollinate. One more interesting thing about this particular plant is that it's a chimera. Will chimera seeds produce baby chimeras???? WHAT DO YOU THINK??? Leave a comment please.

A Big Violet Flower!

This is Arctic Frost growing in it's "baby" pot.... the flowers are in some cases fully three inches across.... I can't wait to see if most of the flowers cover the top in a big white puff of flower fabulousness.

Also.... if this plant were hybridized or crossed back with itself, would the flowers still be as large? My guess is that it would produce the majority of young with normal size flowers.... comment on this!

What is Wrong With My Strep?

I got a small Neil's "Canada" last summer.  It was planted in a very light mostly perlite mix. I repotted it immediately scraping off some of the perlite. I use a 3 parts milled sphagnum peat moss, 2 parts vermiculite, and 2 parts perlite for my streps. 

The plant seemed happy at first and then the burned leaves appeared. More leaves formed and the burning continued on the old and new leaves.  I finally sent Dale Martens a picture and asked her what she thought the problem could be.  She said "It looks like necrotic tissue from drying out once too often.  But if that were not the case, if it were mine, I'd get rid of it.  Sometimes due to the genetics of a strep, it doesn't cooperate in whatever conditions are ok for the other streps that grow near it."

I really like the plant and would hate to throw it out so I wicked it and now new leaves are forming and only one tip of a leaf has any burned tip.  Apparently, that particular plant doesn't like to dry out.

Article and photo done by Sharon J. Thanks and please comment on the post!

Refresh that Terrarium! HOW TO DO IT.

Winter getting a little boring? How about getting some of the violets that are blooming on display? A terrarium is a nice way to give the plants a little more humidity in the middle of the heating season when house moisture is usually very low.

Take a glass enclosure (which are very popular currently and can be found at places like Pottery Barn etc.) and line the edges with some long fiber sphagnum moss. The main interior space may be filled with a light weight soil mix or more sphagnum moss.

Make sure the potting medium in the container is nicely moist. It is very easy to over-water a terrarium, so use some good judgment on this. No standing water in the bottom of the bowl, no musty odor coming from the soil mix.....

Get some miniature or semi-miniature violets and put in a yarn/string wick. We are leaving the violets in the pots and not "planting" them directly in the bowl's medium. This way we can remove them quickly to freshen them and get them groomed and looking lovely.

Continue planting the potted violets and any other plants that fit nicely into your "landscape plan". The planting should look like a small scene from nature, not just a bunch of plants stuck hastily into a bowl.

Finish off with some accessories. Remember to think "in scale" when choosing accessories, rocks, pieces of wood and decorations. Don't go for huge when  small will do nicely.

What's Bloomin' in the plant room now...

Lookie what is blooming in the plant room today. A Kohleria is putting on a little show to brighten up the rather dreary winter days we're having.

Click on the photo to make it larger.

Soil mixes 101

I have been making my own soil mixes when I found that almost all ready made mixes contain dolomite lime.  This makes the soil more alkaline but my water has a high ph so adding more could make plants struggling to grow. It is always a good idea to check with your local water source and see what the ph is in your area's water before adding any lime.

I use a basic mix of 3 parts sphagnum peat moss, 2 parts vermiculite, and one part perlite.  The brand of Sunshine Peat Moss is getting harder to find because there are newer suppliers and the quality is not as good as the Sunshine brand.  It is not as fine and has twigs in it.  I have found the Sunshine brand at a few garden centers and many times in a hardware store. 

I like the coarse vermiculite.  Again it is difficult to find.  Most stores carry the horticulture vermiculite and it is very fine. I found it held more water and kept the soil too soggy. You should try and see what works for you.

Perlite does not seem to have many grades of sizes so it is easy to find.  Once I get all the ingredients I put them in an ice cream bucket and water them well so the peat and vermiculite soak up the water.  It takes about a day for it to get saturated. 

The most important thing after I get it all soaked up is to mix it well getting every bit of the peat mixed in.  The peat can end up in the bottom of the container with the perlite floating on top.  This is the most important step to do. If you don't mix it thoroughly you will have a very loose mix on top, and a soggy mix on the bottom of the bucket.

I have never bothered to figure out the cost of making my own mixes, but I do know that what is in my mix. Each grower is different, as we have different living areas and different size plants we like to grow but this is a basic start of making your own mix.  If you find you think the mix is not working well, then try different size vermiculite.  Try not to add too many variables at one time because you may not know what worked well or not well.

The November/December 2009 issue of the AVSA African violet magazine has an article "Everyone's mix is different".  It is a list from well-known growers and as you will see they are all different, yet the same using peat moss, vermiculite and perlite. 

Blushing Flamingo

Lookie what we got with some of our hybridizing? A mottled flower with a great pink throat. Let's see if it will continue to bloom with the patterning on it's flower petals!

That's what some of the offspring looked like. We got one interesting cross that gave us flower color that ranged from purple, through light purple, bluish, pinkish, darker pink and mauve. The throat color wasn't all that interesting but the variation was really quite amazing. PS: See the side bar entitled Beautiful Blossoms. These are just three of the colors we got.

Streptocarpus: Sex

This is a pictorial commentary on how to pollinate a Streptocarpus flower. I purposely took most of the color out of the photos to highlight some of the specific details of the photo. Please CLICK ON THE PHOTO to enlarge it and get a better look at what we're talking about.


The first photo shows a strep flower cut open. The male parts of the flower, the anthers (or pollen sacs) and the filaments are shown. They are attached directly to the lower lobes of the strep flower petals or corolla. They grow right out of the pretty colored petals.

The second photo shows a tweezers holding the joined pollen sacs of the same strep flower. The pollen sacs are whole and unbroken in the photo. The pollen is inside and it would look like dust to the person looking at it if they weren't using a magnifier or microscope.

The third photo is of the female parts of the strep flower. The roundish end part is the stigma which the pollen sticks to and where the process of fertilization begins. The stigma is part of the female portion of the flower called the pistil. The stigma is sort of fuzzy and sticky and that helps keep the pollen in contact with it.

The fourth photo shows the tweezers that are holding the pollen sacs coming into contact with the stigma. The pollen sacs need to be "ripe" or mature and broken open so the dusty pollen grains inside can come into direct contact with the female parts. When the pollen grain comes into contact, a whole process of chemical changes take place. A small tube (a pollen tube) is grown down the length of the pistil all the way to the ovary (at the base of the flower where the flower petals join the green calyx and the pedicil or stem of the blossom). The male genetic material then joins the female genetic material in the flower and the flower is "fertilized". Seeds can now form. If the male DNA isn't allowed to contact the female flower in a reasonable amount of time the flower fades and dies and no seeds or fruits are formed.

As an example of this, you will probably recall that some years there is an abundant crop of apples and some years the crop is very sparse. One of the possible reasons for this happening is that the weather is so cold some springs that the insects that normally pollinate the apple tree are not flying about because of the cold temperature. The apple trees bloom because they are genetically programed to do so, but there are very few pollinators to carry the pollen to the stigmas of waiting flowers.... the flowers fade and drop off and only a tiny fraction of the possible flowers have been pollinated. There will be very few apples forming on the tree that season.

The last photo is is of a newly forming seed pod (or developing ovary). You will notice the twisting nature of the pod (that's the reason why they are called streptocarpus - strep meaning twisted). The flower right next to it has had the petals removed to show the contrast between a non fertilized flower and the newly maturing fertilized one.

Like the apple example discussed above, the strep seed pod is comparable to the apple forming on the tree with the seeds inside it. When it's ripe, the apple seeds will be ready to come out of the apple and grow new apple trees and when the strep seed pod is ripe, the seeds in the cutely twisted pod will be ready to come out and form new streptocarpus plants.

All of the seeds will have unique genetics, just like each child born is unique (unless you consider identical twins which came from one egg that doubled itself). So, all the strep babies that you grow out have the potential to be interesting and unique. Many will look like the parents, but some will not.

Streptocarpus Seeds: How to Plant Seeds

Here is one way to start some seedlings of your own. Take a deli-type tray with an attached cover. Clean it up and then put down a layer of a porous starter mix.


Sprinkle some powdered sphagnum moss on the surface. This does a couple of things. One is that the sphagnum will hold a little bit of moisture around the VERY tiny seedlings. The second thing is that the sphagnum is supposed to prevent fungal problems and "damping-off" of the seedlings. At any rate, it can't hurt.


Dampen the surface of the mix slightly. The mix in the container is DAMP, but not wet, leaky, dripping, standing in water or otherwise soaked.




Put dividers in the container if you intend to try more than one variety of seed.



Since the cover is attached to the box, you won't accidently mix up the orientation of the cover. What you write on it will reflect what sort of seed is directly underneath.



Take some white smooth paper like the sort that comes in the computer tray. Cut it generously and leave some room so that you can handle it without trouble. Fold it so that the seed will fall into the crease and line up so that you can gently tap them off where you wish to put them on the soil's surface.


This is what a small seed pod looks like. Gently twist to get the TINY seeds to fall onto the paper. Gesneriads produce copious amounts of minute seeds. Don't use too many, you don't want to grow out hundreds of the same variety of seed. Besides if something happens to this batch, you will have another chance to use more of the seed in the pod to try another time.


CLICK ON THE PHOTO to see the size of the tiny seed on this paper. The pointer is showing you the small black spots on the white paper. These are SEEDS not dirt.




After each different seed you put on the soil, write the information on the attached cover. The type, date, notes you might want to remember.....



This is what a tray with six types of seed looks like. It's very inexpensive to do (free containers), easy and it doesn't take more than about 15 minutes to get the job done. Put the box under your plant lights or in a bright spot and check every couple of days. You will see green in probably a week to 10 days. Then we'll talk about what to do with the newest baby gesneriads.

Poll Results

The last poll asked what other plants you like to grow along with your gesneriads. Perhaps you like the fact that they need similar conditions, or you find that they just compliment what you already like. The answers were interesting..... people liked things that vine or trail along with bonsai type plants. Also mentioned were tropical plants with fragrance.

Now that we're talking about propagation of gesneriads from seed and hybridizing, take a moment to answer the next poll question.... What about seeds?????