African Violet Thread

How many do you have, Finnie?

Using regular math, or chicken math?
:gig
Chicken math, of course! The leaf sprouts don’t count because there are so many, and they don’t all become actual plants. A lot of my set leaves have roots, but no sprouts yet. So none of those count!

I have 42 African violets and 6 Primulinas. (Related to African violets in the gesneriad family.)

A little bit less than half of them are baby or half grown plants.
 
Do you have other houseplants, too, or just African violets? My mother loved the violets, and I do, too. I think I ran out of space after I was inundated with Christmas cacti gifts!

I went hunting for some AVs today, but came up empty.
Aw, that’s too bad! Did you try grocery stores? Sometimes ones that have a floral department will have them. (My Kroger’s floral department does not though.)

I have lots of other houseplants. I’ve always had lots of them or less of them at different times. Except in 2013 I was sick of watering them, so I gave all I had left at that point (not too many because they don’t tend to survive if you stop watering them 🫢) to one of my daughters. So from 2013 to 2021 I had no houseplants at all.

In 2021 two things happened. My husband said he wanted a low light tolerant plant for our darkish north facing living room. That’s his room to decorate and he decided a large floor plant was what he wanted in there. And my same daughter was visiting on Mother’s Day and she wanted to go to a nearby plant shop.

I came home that day with one tiny 2” plant, mainly because that store was super expensive. But that opened the floodgates and I spent the rest of that year on the hunt for plants and pots to put them in. My purchases included African violets, but it wasn’t until a year or so later that I found out you can buy them on line! That is so much fun!

Then I discovered streptocarpus and other gesneriads. I have really bad luck with streps. My last ones died off over the summer.

I will have to take some pictures of the houseplants tomorrow in the daylight. It’s supposed to be sunny, so they should turn out pretty good.
 
Aw, that’s too bad! Did you try grocery stores? Sometimes ones that have a floral department will have them. (My Kroger’s floral department does not though.)

I have lots of other houseplants. I’ve always had lots of them or less of them at different times. Except in 2013 I was sick of watering them, so I gave all I had left at that point (not too many because they don’t tend to survive if you stop watering them 🫢) to one of my daughters. So from 2013 to 2021 I had no houseplants at all.

In 2021 two things happened. My husband said he wanted a low light tolerant plant for our darkish north facing living room. That’s his room to decorate and he decided a large floor plant was what he wanted in there. And my same daughter was visiting on Mother’s Day and she wanted to go to a nearby plant shop.

I came home that day with one tiny 2” plant, mainly because that store was super expensive. But that opened the floodgates and I spent the rest of that year on the hunt for plants and pots to put them in. My purchases included African violets, but it wasn’t until a year or so later that I found out you can buy them on line! That is so much fun!

Then I discovered streptocarpus and other gesneriads. I have really bad luck with streps. My last ones died off over the summer.

I will have to take some pictures of the houseplants tomorrow in the daylight. It’s supposed to be sunny, so they should turn out pretty good.

Looking forward to seeing more pictures Finnie!
 
Do you have other houseplants, too

Looking forward to seeing more pictures Finnie!
Other than the violets, my plants are in 3 main areas. And 3 or 4 in separate spots that I didn’t take pictures of.

Living room window. Those 2 big ones were at DH’s request. They have gotten a lot bigger than they were almost 5 years ago.
IMG_5551.jpeg

We ended up getting a large fake monstera from Hobby Lobby for his dark corner floor plant. But then when the first Christmas came, it got moved to the basement to make room for the tree. After a while we donated it to Goodwill.

Here are two angles of the dining room plants. Those are north and west facing windows.
IMG_5549.jpeg
IMG_5548.jpeg

Betta in plant bowl.
IMG_5547.jpeg


South facing window in the kitchen-family room area. I can’t use my desk because it has too many plants on it.
😅
IMG_5545.jpeg


So my kitchen table is my desk.
IMG_5553.jpeg

That Swiss Cheese Monstera is my newest plant from Aldi last week!
 
Following along. I just got given a bunch and am going to try and keep them alive so any tips would be most welcome!
The good news is African Violets are not toxic to cats so I can actually have them in the house assuming I don’t kill them!
 
Following along. I just got given a bunch and am going to try and keep them alive so any tips would be most welcome!
The good news is African Violets are not toxic to cats so I can actually have them in the house assuming I don’t kill them!
Welcome!

Funny you should mention non toxic. A week or so ago I found some dog throw up with unmistakable African violet leaves in it. Then close by I found two of my lower shelf violets knocked on the floor. Apparently my collie, who had refused to eat her breakfast that morning, had decided that if she couldn’t eat grass to make herself throw up, then she would try one of my plants. It worked. 🫤

She has never bothered any of those plants before. She must have been desperate. She did go on to eat her meals properly after that.
 
@RoyalChick We want to see pictures of your new violets!
Well they don’t look like much right now as they aren’t flowering.
There are five of them and they came crammed into the basket in the picture. Once they finished flowering I took two out as they were too cramped to be able to water.
I think I need to repot them into bigger individual pots. They are all different colors and were very pretty as a display but I think it is too hard to care for them like that.
Here they are at the moment - they do seem to be putting out new leaves so I guess they are reasonably happy.
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