Ander Afrikaan Viooltjie

  Just a little note to say a big THANK YOU to Angela for being our Content Editor all this time. Angela you were doing a fantastic job. Good luck with your Nursing School.

  Well members, today we have the honour to present you Richard's favourite African Violet ( I hope you are not blushing Richard…) Richard had sent me his text long before he even knew that he would become our Content Editor. Thank you Richard for taking that job.

  Here is Richard's favourite African Violet :

  My Grandmother, Helen Stewart Whitehouse, was the greatest influence on my life when I was growing up; she was also my best friend. She had a saying for EVERYTHING! I can remember at least a hundred of her little maxims for living, and I share them regularly to this day with the ninth-grade students in my English classes. She had only one African violet, in an old McCoy pot; it grew on her windowsill at the bend in the stairs. It was a South window, and the poor thing was so brown that for years I thought AVs had brown leaves! Somehow, it thrived on neglect. I would water it about once a month on a Sunday when we came to visit, and I do not know if it got water or food at any other time. Nevertheless, it was ALWAYS in bloom, brown leaves and all - old-fashioned single purple stars with bright yellow pollen in the center, and (when there WERE leaves other than brown, dried up ones!) red-backed oval leaves the darkest imaginable shade of green-black.

  My grandmother must have known I loved that plant - a few years before she died (I was twelve, and she died when I was fifteen), she gave me one of its progeny which she had started in a jelly glass (remember jelly glasses?) on the kitchen window and had planted for me in a clay pot. I kept it all through college; in my first apartment, and through every twist and turn on the road to adulthood.

  My Aunt returned home after my grandmother's death to care for my Grandfather, and when HE died (at the age of 100 years and nine months!) in 1996 she decided to sell Grandmother's house and head to Florida. Before she left, she asked all of the grandchildren if we wanted to come up and look through the odds and ends in the attic for something of sentimental value. I was the last one to take advantage of the offer, so most things of value had long since departed.

  Imagine my astonishment when I cleared away some boxes and found my Grandmother's old McCoy violet pot! The brown stem of the old plant was still in it (VERY DEAD), but I still had the one she started for me all those years ago. I took the pot home, planted my own descendent of the original in it, and now it is the pride of my AV collection, not to mention a direct living tie to my beloved Grandmother Helen.

  The plant she gave me is now almost thirty-one years old! The stem has snaked around twice completely, and I recently chopped off and re-rooted the crown. In the process, I started some leaves that fell off, which I will be giving to friends and interested family members. My grandmother lives on in the daily reminder of this intrepid violet, and I can still be moved to tears each time it comes into bloom.

Rich Follett
Strasburg, Virginia

Tips & Tools

As the Fall arrives with back-to-school and all of its beautiful colors, we African Violet enthusiasts bid a misty farewell to the shipping season and set our sights on the making of new babies for the spring. All through the cold months we will be putting down leaves, labeling and carefully tending them while looking for the indescribable joy that comes with the first tiny leaves as they push their way up from under the earth at the base of the leaf stem. It is a little miracle, played out for us over and over again - the miracle of the Saintpaulia.

There doesn't seem to be any one surefire method to guarantee success when propagating leaves, but there are some things you can do to ensure that your favorite varieties will send up babies to share with friends and to perpetuate the AVs you love most. Here are a few simple tips:

1. Select healthy, young leaves - not juvenile ones. If rooting a variegated plant, a leaf with more green will make a stronger showing. The variegation will still be in the babies - it is in the genetic code- but more chlorophyll in the Mother leaf means more ability to produce healthy babies.
2. Use a STERILE rooting medium - bake potting soil first to be sure. Sterilize pots as well.
3. You can always ADD water - water sparingly to avoid rot!
4. Place the leaves in a relatively constant light and temperature - sudden changes in heat, light, and humidity can stress them and cause them to wither.
5. RESIST the urge to peek! No matter how optimal the environment is, there is still a minimum time required for leaves to set roots and produce babies. Check for rot and mildew, but don't touch for at least two months!
6. If you are rooting in water, roots will come quickly, but they are roots adapted to water, not soil. Add a teaspoonful of soil to the water at a time once the babies start coming to acclimate the roots gradually. Hauling a baby out of water and planting it straight into soil can stress it terribly.
7. Wait until babies have leaves the size of a dime to separate them! Separating them too soon will surely spell disaster.
8. ALWAYS put down leaves of your favorite varieties each season - at the worst, you will have too many of a plant you love and will have to find homes for some babies. At the very least, you will have an insurance policy if something goes wrong with your parent plant.
9. Buddy system - I always think it is a good idea to give leaves of your favorites to friends so they can grow them. If something happens to your plant, a genetic twin is available from an environment free from whatever killed yours!
10. (This is a heartbreaker for some folks!) It is probably a good idea to save only the two or three strongest babies when separating. Darwin was on to something. Stronger babies are
    more disease resistant and have better root systems. Whether it is a juvenile or an adult, an African Violet will only ever be as good as its root system.

Apart from seeing the beauty of their blooms, there is nothing more rewarding about keeping African Violets than putting down leaves to root and seeing the babies develop. Autumn may be upon us now, but Spring is always in the heart of African Violet leaves. Happy Violeting!

 Richard Follett

Share the Joy

Richard Follett

Gracie in her tanning bed

 Hello, my name is Gracie and I live with Richard in Virginia and his wife Mary Ruth. Although I am only a cat, I help with the Share the Joy program by breaking off leaves for Richard to root and by constantly pawing through the soil in the pots to aerate the roots and expose potential pests or problems before they become too serious! Once I even fertilized an entire pot of babies in my own special way! Richard made LOTS of appreciative noises when he discovered THAT. Thanks to me, Richard always has lots of challenges and plenty to do. He is seldom appreciative of my efforts, but I continue because I know what is best for him and for his African Violets. Besides, he pays attention to THEM all the time and I am just too beautiful to be ignored.

 Spending as much time as I do supporting Richard and his African Violet habit leaves me very tired, so I often have to stretch out in the new tanning bed he bought to relieve my stress. Even that is a challenge, though - he keeps trying to put African Violets in it and I have to keep knocking them off so there is room for me! Anyway, I allowed him to take this picture of me for your newsletter so all of you would be reminded of how important pets truly are to the African Violet enthusiast.

NEWS ITEM:

Rich Follett in Virginia has started a new AVSA chapter club. It is called the Shenandoah Saintpaulia Society, and after its first meeting boasts ten members! The inaugural meeting featured a demonstration on how to put down leaves fro rooting using a Sundae kit. November's meeting will feature a tour of African Violet websites via the computer lab at a local school, and the January meeting will take members to a local ceramics shop where they will create and decorate their own self-watering Arican Violet pot. The Shenandoah Saintpaulia Society has received is AVSA charter and is using the local library meeting room as a home base.

COMING EVENTS

Beginner's chat on Tuesday evenings Starts at 8 PM central time and 9 PM eastern time. It is run by Del. Tina has not run the chat on Saturday for over a year. It is now run by myself and Del and it is at 3 PM eastern time.

Backround by of Betsy T.

All material on this website is Copyright © 2002, we do not give permission to reproduce or distribute it in its current or any edited form with out the permission of the owner.
 

      Newsletter 22