Dividing Violets

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to dividing two of my very large violets. I put it off for as long as I could because there's always a risk that the plant won't survive (at least when I'm in charge!) and I wanted to keep the parent plants as long as I could. But they were clearly suffering and would not have lived anyway so I decided to go for it. Look how sad this is!

  

  I removed the plant from the pot and could clearly see several separate "babies". With a paring knife, I cut down between them to separate them.

 

 One of the plants had lifted OUT OF THE DIRT! The brown area is exposed root. Not good!

 

 Once they were separated, I had four new plants from each original one. Now we'll see how many of these plants actually live!

I pulled off the outer leaves until I could see a decent sized stem to plant. It doesn't need to be super-long, but long enough to be planted and support the foliage until new roots take hold.

I have been saving a few small containers to put them in but I clearly didn't have enough. For violets, a cheap garden center temporary planter will do (like the ones you get when you buy bedding plants). It has to have holes in the bottom for watering. If you don't like the looks of the pot (I don't!), you can set it down in a more decorative planter.

 I filled my new containers with violet soil. This is very important as regular potting soil is much too heavy for African violets. Then I poked each new plant down into the dirt firmly.

 

 From the two mother plants, I ended up with this many babies! I ran out of pots so had to use tiny succulent pots for two of the smaller ones. They'll work for awhile while the plants are rooting, but then those violets will need to be re-potted. Violets tend to bloom better if kept in a smaller pot, but these little containers are way too tiny!

After potting them up, I set them each down in a small bowl of water mixed with violet food. After about 30 minutes, the violets will have absorbed all the water that they can and need to be removed from the bowl.

 

 Since I'm out of room in my regular violet location, I set up a new "violet nursery" (HA!) on the same side of the house in our daughter's old bedroom. The light is just about the same so hopefully they'll be happy there. I've watered them a couple of times and so far, so good!

Fingers crossed that these sweet babies will grow up to become beautiful plants...like their mamas!

jp