A Little Experimentation is Sometimes Necessary
I recently discovered a new way to propagate chimeras. You can greatly increase the amount of suckers produced to take as baby plantlets from a chimera by cutting off the top of the crown. "Cutting off the top of the crown!" I had read somewhere else that if you damage the crown, the plant dies. EEEKS!! What to believe. So I did my own experiment.
I accidentally discovered this fact after the top leaves of a couple of my plants turned brown and died. I picked the dead top leaves off and when they grew back, there were two crown growths on each plant.
Actually, you can do this with any violet that you want a bunch of suckers from. Most people don't find suckers attractive but growers do - especially chimera growers. You pot up the crown and dome it until it forms roots of its own and you wait until the de-crowned plant produces loads of suckers you can later harvest for new plantlets. Sweet, huh? That's what I call fast chimera propagation!
OK, so now that I know that - I don't feel so bad about not being able to grow chimeras from flower stalks. Every flower stalk I have tried to get to produce for me has failed to grow. Every single one of them. I'm not convinced it can even be done. I think it's a fib growers tell novices to keep down the competition because this is THE quickest way to do it!
I recently also lost a beautiful space violet. Thank goodness I put down a few leaves of it but it went quickly. I guess I over watered it??? I didn't think so but it had all the symptoms of crown rot and eventually over just three days, went all floppy and died no matter what I did to try to save it. It was blooming so beautiful too. I'm glad I got some pictures of it. I'm still not sure exactly what I did wrong. Don't you hate when that happens? Oh it was a beauty too. Not to fret, pet. There will be more. I already had a couple of healthy leaves put down.
All the stems to all the leaves shriveled up even though the leaves looked fine. ??? Never saw that before. The stems went all floppy and loosie-goosie and dried up but the leaves were all fine and rigid and good.
So to experiment with the leaves, I took one and placed it flat on a bit of soil and made several cuts into it. I domed it and we'll see what it does. I also took a few more of its leaves and cut the bottom edge off since it didn't have any stems anyway. I put the cut ends barely into the soil and domed those too. I hope some babies grow from my experiments. I really do. This is such a beautiful plant.
I accidentally discovered this fact after the top leaves of a couple of my plants turned brown and died. I picked the dead top leaves off and when they grew back, there were two crown growths on each plant.
Actually, you can do this with any violet that you want a bunch of suckers from. Most people don't find suckers attractive but growers do - especially chimera growers. You pot up the crown and dome it until it forms roots of its own and you wait until the de-crowned plant produces loads of suckers you can later harvest for new plantlets. Sweet, huh? That's what I call fast chimera propagation!
OK, so now that I know that - I don't feel so bad about not being able to grow chimeras from flower stalks. Every flower stalk I have tried to get to produce for me has failed to grow. Every single one of them. I'm not convinced it can even be done. I think it's a fib growers tell novices to keep down the competition because this is THE quickest way to do it!
I recently also lost a beautiful space violet. Thank goodness I put down a few leaves of it but it went quickly. I guess I over watered it??? I didn't think so but it had all the symptoms of crown rot and eventually over just three days, went all floppy and died no matter what I did to try to save it. It was blooming so beautiful too. I'm glad I got some pictures of it. I'm still not sure exactly what I did wrong. Don't you hate when that happens? Oh it was a beauty too. Not to fret, pet. There will be more. I already had a couple of healthy leaves put down.
All the stems to all the leaves shriveled up even though the leaves looked fine. ??? Never saw that before. The stems went all floppy and loosie-goosie and dried up but the leaves were all fine and rigid and good.
So to experiment with the leaves, I took one and placed it flat on a bit of soil and made several cuts into it. I domed it and we'll see what it does. I also took a few more of its leaves and cut the bottom edge off since it didn't have any stems anyway. I put the cut ends barely into the soil and domed those too. I hope some babies grow from my experiments. I really do. This is such a beautiful plant.
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