A Little Background

The last time I grew violets, I bought a few from the local grocery store that looked bad, brought them home and nursed them back to health for a while. I was not even aware that violets came in colors like red, yellow and green. Or that they had stripes, flecks of color, ruffles and variegated leaves.The only ones I could find locally were pink, white and different shades of purple. I didn't just pick the ones that needed help (my garden is full of sale rack plants that I've brought back to life), some of them were blooming profusely and I fell in love with them all over again.

Of course after they bloomed, they usually did not bloom again,.. ever. And I didn't know how to make them. So I watered them too much or too little, and out of frustration I just lost interest and neglected them until they died back and faded away. It took me several years to get my interest back in trying to grow them again. I never tried to propagate them from leaves because if I couldn't even get one to live, how could I make more that were just going to die? That was my reasoning anyway.

It took me even longer to realize that they died because I was frustrated not knowing the right soil, water and light they needed.

Violets take time and patience. And a little bit of research. You have to check on them nearly every day so you can catch the ones that need more water, the ones that need grooming and the ones that need "something else" for you to figure out before it's too late.

Thank you social media for teaching me how to care for them again. They are even selling them on ebay! So it's now possible for the hobbyist to amass an extensive collection and wide variety of "collector" violets that a few years ago were only available to growers and professional violeteers (is that a word?). Once you master the basics of propagating leaves, it's a whole new world that opens up to you. It makes many new varieties affordable to you for your collection. You can join a group and trade leaves with other violet enthusiasts or buy leaves from growers for a few bucks online. This is a hobby anyone can afford!

Yukako is my favorite chimera. I never had any exotic varieties the last time I grew violets, just grocery store pink and purples. Yukako is green and purple striped. A chimera is a mutant of another plant. Chimeras cannot be propagated from leaf cuttings, they have to be separated from the plant as a sucker or a flower stem. The chimeras in the picture above were grown from a chimera leaf which is rare. It's a Lyon's Crown Jewel sport. That's what I love about violets. You just never know what you are going to get when you put down a leaf.

Chimeras remind me of striped petunias - which I love! I always plant them in my spring garden. I'm learning so much more about violets this time around. I have some new ones that have lived and bloomed several times now since I got them. That's real progress! And now I have the tools and technology to grow them year round.