No sprouts and still mites

An update.  It looks like I have a lot of green algae colored perlite, maybe some moss growing. No African violet sprouts.  Oh well. The next pod in waiting is Gecko's Vespa Vino (seed parent) x Butterfly Blue Eye. Dated 1-8-12, It's still developing on the plant. Even if it dries up in May, it should hopefully have crossed that 4 month viability limit.  The previous pod may have only had 3 months. I forgot if I am supposed to count the first month or not. I may have mistakenly counted it when I said I had 4 months.  The Vespa Vino pod is at least 4 months now even if I don't count January.


This cross should be interesting because the plants are like polar opposites. Butterfly Blue eye grows very flat. Vespa Vino is anything but flat. Butterfly Blue Eye is neat and follows its own symmetry.  Vespa Vino is anything but neat.  It's a wasp.  Blue eyed wasp flowers should be cool. I'll get to see if Vespa Vino carries the star flower gene.

Drawbacks:  Vespa vino is a semi-double dropper. Jeff Smith and others have stated wasp violets can't be droppers. The same is said about semi's and doubles. I've seen Marrie Lorraine and even Ness' Fantasy Gold drop a bloom or two. My particular African violets must be freaks. They defy all tried and true logic.

Butterfly Blue Eye is also a dropper. If both have the dropper gene, being recessive 100% of the offspring will drop their flowers before they fade.  Some people like this trait and some do not.  I'm not a fan of it, but I won't throw away a good plant just because of it. But then again if part of what Jeff smith said about semis and wasps holds true, I may still see sticktites or occasional droppers.  Time will tell.  To be honest I'm more excited about this crossing than the previous. Even if that means no variegation.

 

Mites

Still can't get rid of the buggers...  I tried a product called Mite x which seemed promising. I didn't even mind the garlic and clove smell. Apparently it's not the best for African violets. It burned out the crowns on just about any violet that got touched by sunlight.  Losing the crown isn't the end of the world, but heck, it's going to take a while for the plant to recover. It will assure that if I want a decent symmetrical plant, I'll have to start over from one of the crown suckers. This is bad news if I wanted to have those particular violets show worthy by August.  But enough of that. Survival is top priority. Show worthy later.

I changed over from a regular family dollar spray bottle to a pump sprayer.  That seems to give better coverage and soak a lot more with forbid than the regular spray bottle did.

On a side note, I may lose my Butterfly Blue eye father parent. I think I still have leaves.  I forgot to check on it this week and left it in with the plants under my grandma's care. The plant ended up (drying out first) soaking wet and drowning in the pot.  I salvaged it, but I can see the mites or something sure took a toll on it's upper leaves. The lower leaves are wilted. The Mite x killed the crown. No healthy leaves = failed plant or harder than heck chance for recovery.

I'm planning and gathering up plants to send over for diagnosis. Anyone know where I go to get that done?  I looked up the University of Minnesota extension website but couldn't see a link to where I send or bring over plant material for diagnosis.  I'll keep posted if they can give a diagnosis.

...Or maybe not

I cannot say enough kind things about the members on this forum. Seriously.  I owe them.  Someone gave me a small bottle of Forbid to treat my plants.

So the process begins. A new challenge.  Spraying or dipping. Every. Damn. Plant. In. The. House.  Not just the african violets, but everything.  Well just about everything. I can't spray vegetables or edible plants. Something just doesn't seem very appetizing about eating something made for mass mite destruction. Those will go outside as soon as April quits trying to make up for the summer March we had. Okay I am paranoid.  Maybe it's a bit overkill. Not all of the violets look as bad as the Menards ones.  In fact many of them are blooming. No one would even suspect anything wrong.  But I am treating them anyway. Paranoid? Over cautious? Maybe.

But in this situation I doubt it is a bad thing.

So far I've gotten a little over half way, maybe further. I lost count at about 80 plants.  So many more and so many more to go.  This may be a good time for me to take inventory to see just how many plants I do have. Total. Total african violets. Total for each variety. Total for my surviving hybrids.

Bathroom floor is ugly. I know....  Yeah submersing an Ivy = Messy. Perlite all over. Everything. Including the floor. And my feet. And the floors around it.

Hoyas aren't much better.

So I resorted to spraying. Even if that means having to do it all over again. it goes much quicker that way. I can treat many plants in a short amount of time. And best of all, no perlite crumblings falling on the floor under my feet. A poor Family Dollar spray bottle is about to become a sacrifice. It's a small price to pay.

Temporary holding place for the treated violets to dry off. These came from the basement. My upstairs plants are being treated separately.

For those who bought any plants from me at the show, they come with a guarantee. If you notice any problems with them or think they have mites, please let me know. Send them back and I'll treat them. I'll keep them for a little while to make sure they grow normal before sending back.  I doubt they were affected, but I just want to make sure everything is okay. Especially any of my hybrids.

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Oh and looks like my seedpod Namely Nancy (seed parent) x Butterfly Bombshell is sprouting.  It's super hard to tell. The shoots can easily be confused with algae on tiny perlite granules. Maybe they are. They are that tiny.   I'm obsessively checking them daily. So far they seem to be growing. Too small to photograph yet. I don't want to smush them with my camera lens.

Timing couldn't have been better.  The pod planted the 6th of the month, seemed to be taking longer than I am used to.  My room can get really warm if it is sunny outside. Like close to 80 degrees if it is over 65 outside and full sun. Seeds that have warnings of taking 20+ days to sprout (Lobelia) take only a couple weeks.  Not seeing anything in my african violet container (deli dish) made me concerned enough to ask about how long I should wait.  Sure enough a few hours after posting, I saw my first tiny specks of green.

If I am looking at true african violet sprouts (and not just algae covered perlite grains) I have about 3-4 coming up right now.  There may be more.  I'm excited. Very excited. And this is coming from a premature seedpod. It ripened and shriveled up within 4 months from pollination. (12-19-11 - 4-6-12, wilted at about 3-20-12 - 3-25-12) 5-6 months are considered better for ripe seeds.  My last two seedpods took about that time.

The end I guess.

The dreaded M word. Mites.  They  don't appear to be the typical c. or broad mites. But they are mites.  And the cure to get rid of them is priced way too high for me to get.  Just when I am about to succeed at something, there's always something to get in the way. It's life I guess. 

Why must it be so damn expensive?  Unless anyone would be foolishly kind enough to give me a product worth $98, then I guess that is the end of my African violet growing.  I just can't bring myself to toss everything right now.

My First African Violet Show

I was waiting to post until I had every (well just about every) photo I took of the show, and write up a really fancy long thing. Well this is as close as I got.  As the date got farther from the show, life added more stuff on my plate, as well as a listing of more stuff to do (and put off doing). So today, I realized a short post just to get it done is far better than nothing at all.

When I first called the AVASM (African Violet Society of Minnesota), I mentioned about wanting to show. I was warned that competition would be tough. I decided just to get into the show would be enough to make me happy.

I brought 14 plants to the show. Many of them were my own hybrids. The club members were impressed. Once the show got started I found 13 of 14 got blue ribbons.  2nd best standard (the photo above).  Best Novice. With my own hybrid. I also pretty much dominated the hybridizer class.

I hope to grow some more to sell next time in the spring or fall. All of the ones I brought sold quickly.  I don't know what will happen for my next show, but I'm really looking forward to entering again. Maybe for the State Fair. I'm sure it will be tougher and a lot more plants to compete against, but hey if I can just get in that will be awesome enough.  I guess I can't compete in Novice anymore. ;)

Tricot

Triploid, tricot, three leaves instead of two. Whatever it is called is a mutation involving chromosomes. Most normal plants and animals have two. (diploid) Sometimes more happen. This case three. Diploid plants (dicots) grow two leaves at a time. (mint, asters, african violets, cucumbers..too many to list) Monocots (grass, philodendrons, etc grow one leaf at a time.) Tricots grow three leaves at a time.

Tricots are not normal with most plants. As far as being able to propagate it, I am not sure. The internet seems all over the board on whether or not they are sterile, stronger or weaker growing, or can be bred. My take is that it would be a hard trait to breed for but can occur as a mutation. The effects are interesting.

I've seen it occur with coleus. (the branch will remain that way until the tip gets broken off. When it branches off, it does so in 3's. The offshoots returned to normal.) I've also seen it occur on a common Milkweed. I've also seen it occur with dandelion blooms. (even more so if they got "fertilized" with weed killer.)


But an African violet?! Nope. This is Laughing Anna. I'm not sure if this is typical for the variety or if mine is a spontaneous mutation. I have a hunch it is a mutation. It isn't the first one I've had for that variety. (A year or two ago, I had a Laughing Anna produce a single huge flower and one small leaf from the center instead of two normal leaves.)


Anyways this is how the plant is affected. From the top:




Unusual symmetry. Leaves grow out at an equilateral triangle. Looks like it has a 180 degree rotation with the tip of the triangle pointing up or down every other leaf set.


Blooms:



Siamese twinning. On. every. Stalk.





Fewer flowers. Stalks twice as long and twice as thick. (To be fair, I didn't typically see lots of flowers per stalk before.)




Everything grows in sets of threes from the crown. Three leaves. Three bloom stalks.






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Update 5-4-12:

It's still keeping to it's 3 leaf at a time growth pattern. As a result it is filling in quite quickly.

Oh No!

How this




became this....




#@$! crown rot. Lost seedpod is lost. It happens to the best of us. Losing an African violet is not the end of the world. Just do what you can to save it, and if that doesn't work, then start over. Whatever happens, does not mean having to give up on African Violets. Too many people get discouraged at this point. But even the best of gardeners can still end up killing a few plants (or more.)

Fortunately I have a back-up baby version of this variety. Now to figure out why this is happening and how to prevent it from attacking more of my violets. There are a few things that stand in mind. I haven't been consistent with watering. I think I let it dry out while I was at work. I could have gotten water in the crown when watering. Or I could have failed to clean my tools properly when removing suckers.

If you're wondering what happened, I put the crown in a fresh pot of soil and bagged it with a ziplock. I tried dusting some cinnamon around the base. It may recover. If not, then at least I tried.

I did find another affected violet a week later, but I hope I saved it by finding the wilted leaf and removing all the rot where it came from. I may have caught it early. Fortunately there was just one spot. I removed all the lower leaves for good measure.

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Follow up: The plant died. It rotted in the bag. Everything. All into mush. I planted the 2nd gen leaf clone in a 4" pot. The starter is now beginning to grow into standard size. I hope it will bloom just as pretty when it gets to full size. I really miss it's unusual wide, almost thumbprint-like raspberry edging, solid pink middles, and coral eyes.

Crosses Fingers

Mother: "Namely Nancy" (8150) 01/30/1995 (A. Miller) Single-semidouble light lavender two-tone sticktite large ruffled star. Variegated dark green, cream and pink, ovate, quilted, scalloped/red back. Large


Father: "Butterfly Bombshell" (B28) (Descendent of Stephanie, 1995 x UltraViolet Unknown, 1996)



Date of cross: 12/19/11

Variegated Seedpod. Awww. How cute!

I find amusing how Nancy droops her pollenated blooms underneath her leaves. Out of sight. She's hiding them from me.

If all goes well I should have some seeds.

I expect:
-100% Tommy Lou variegation (mother inherited trait)
-50% stars
-Solid colors or 2 tone shades
- mostly red backed leaves
-3/4th non droppers (Will find out if any are carriers for the dropper gene)
-50% standard and 50% large??? (I forgot which size is dominant) I prefer standard to large.



Guesses:
-Non Blue lavenders and pinks.
-Coral colors??
-Fluted petals - (not sure on percent)
- Speckling????
- thin geneva edge???? (B28 sometimes blooms with a slight light outline)


Goals:
- Get B28's Bloom shape on vareigated leaves
- Get a heavier bloomer with stronger bloom stalks than NN
- see what interesting recessives I get. (Hoping for darker coral colors)


Overall feel: Not sure if there will be much variety of colors, but I could be proven wrong. It may be easier for me to focus on what to keep vs, what to throw (or give away to random people. Or better yet to throw at people, LOL)