My Biggest Mistake
It has taken me a major chunk of my life to figure out what I did wrong all of the other times I've tried to grow African Violets and failed. And believe me, I've tried many times over the past 40 years to grow them. Usually one or two at a time, my rationale being that if I can't keep one alive, why buy more? Same reason I didn't try to propagate them.
I think the best thing I learned this time that made the biggest difference for me was how to get them to flower. Before, I would put them in a north or west window and after they bloomed once, they never did again. Soon after that, over the course of several weeks or months, I would just lose interest in them and they eventually died from neglect.
So the most important thing for me to learn was how to keep them blooming so I wouldn't lose interest in them again. Everything else I could learn or unlearn. They absolutely will not bloom without enough light. You've probably heard that some people grow them near windows and they do just fine but mine never did. So when I made the investment in grow lights and leds for all my shelves, I was pretty much committed to giving them a lot of light when they needed it. And that was the trick. They bloomed profusely with flushes of blooms coming only weeks apart. Yippee! I finally got one to bloom again. From then on, I was hooked. I wanted more blooms. More and more blooms.
I do have many of them in south windows with frosty plastic (cheap plastic drop cloth at dollar store) taped to the panes to "illuminate" the sun and diffuse it before it gets to my violets but in those windows I also have red and blue led grow light sticks. They get the strongest natural light, but the weakest supplemental gro lighting. I got them from Walmart. Nothing fancy or scientific in lumens and wattage at a certain distance, I just bought what they had available. My shelves have 11" headspace. I got the slim under cabinet led sticks made by Lights of America. Sometimes they were hard to find and I had to go to 3 different Walmarts to get what I needed.
The rest of my lighting is the warm white leds of the same type. I use grow lights in my south windows as supplemental lighting for gray days and in the evenings. My white leds I think are stronger light so I use them on all my other shelves. I must be doing something right because my plants are nearly all in constant bloom, only taking short resting periods between flushes of blooms. OR - they have adjusted to the light I've provided for them.
It's not all lighting though, that was just my biggest challenge. Without the right soil mix, plant food, insecticide, water, humidity and room temperature, they would not thrive. Once I got the lighting right, I knew I could grow beautiful violets so I just plunged right in!
I think the best thing I learned this time that made the biggest difference for me was how to get them to flower. Before, I would put them in a north or west window and after they bloomed once, they never did again. Soon after that, over the course of several weeks or months, I would just lose interest in them and they eventually died from neglect.
So the most important thing for me to learn was how to keep them blooming so I wouldn't lose interest in them again. Everything else I could learn or unlearn. They absolutely will not bloom without enough light. You've probably heard that some people grow them near windows and they do just fine but mine never did. So when I made the investment in grow lights and leds for all my shelves, I was pretty much committed to giving them a lot of light when they needed it. And that was the trick. They bloomed profusely with flushes of blooms coming only weeks apart. Yippee! I finally got one to bloom again. From then on, I was hooked. I wanted more blooms. More and more blooms.
I do have many of them in south windows with frosty plastic (cheap plastic drop cloth at dollar store) taped to the panes to "illuminate" the sun and diffuse it before it gets to my violets but in those windows I also have red and blue led grow light sticks. They get the strongest natural light, but the weakest supplemental gro lighting. I got them from Walmart. Nothing fancy or scientific in lumens and wattage at a certain distance, I just bought what they had available. My shelves have 11" headspace. I got the slim under cabinet led sticks made by Lights of America. Sometimes they were hard to find and I had to go to 3 different Walmarts to get what I needed.
The rest of my lighting is the warm white leds of the same type. I use grow lights in my south windows as supplemental lighting for gray days and in the evenings. My white leds I think are stronger light so I use them on all my other shelves. I must be doing something right because my plants are nearly all in constant bloom, only taking short resting periods between flushes of blooms. OR - they have adjusted to the light I've provided for them.
It's not all lighting though, that was just my biggest challenge. Without the right soil mix, plant food, insecticide, water, humidity and room temperature, they would not thrive. Once I got the lighting right, I knew I could grow beautiful violets so I just plunged right in!
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