African Violet Update

It's been a while since I posted anything, mostly because there wasn't anything to say. Last summer was awful for my clematis because of the painting fiasco, and my African Violets were just little struggling babies.

Of the 13 varieties that I started from leaves in October of 2007, only a few survived. However, the ones that have lasted have grown nice and strong, and now I have more plants than I know what to do with!

Here's what I originally was trying to grow. I've crossed out the ones that didn't make it. Note that these blooms are NOT from my plants. I found pictures on the internet. Pictures from my collection are below. A lot of these are pictures of award-winning plants. I can only hope that mine will be this nice someday!

Outer Limits 12/17/2005 (Lyndon Lyon Greenhouses/D. Herringshaw) Single-semidouble blue large frilled pansy/pink and white fantasy. Dark green, plain/red back. Large


Dazzling Fantasyland (9521) 12/17/2005 (Lyndon Lyon Greenhouses/P. Sorano) Single-semidouble light pink pansy/blue fantasy, violet-red edge. Dark green, plain/red back. Large


Sinister Shadow (Lyndon Lyon Greenhouses) Deep, dark purple, single and semi-double pansies. This variety is more like the older type of violets. The standard, dark green foliage, is variegated in beige on the leaf edge.Standard.


Sora Zachariah (B. Werness) Light blue semidouble blossoms edged in white and green, over variegated foliage of dark green and white. (User Database)


Sheer Romance (6752) 11/02/1987 (S. Sorano) Double pink star/white edge. Medium green, ovate. Large


Rum Punch (S. Sorano) Semi-double double medium pink star/mauve tips. Dark green. Standard


Sweet Lady Love (LLG)Medium pink, semidouble pansies, with a dainty frilled, thin white edge. Occasionally, green shows up on the top petals. A profuse bloomer! Well shaping, standard foliage of medium green, slightly quilted. Standard.


Silver Smoke (LLG)Clusters upon clusters of the palest shade of lavender, semidouble, pansy shaped blossoms are marked strongly in green on the petal edges, and are produced above medium green, quilted and pointed, lightly wavy show foliage, sporting a silver reverse. Standard.


Alison's Laughter (LLG)Very large, double stars of medium purple, with a thin white outline on very frilled edges. Raspberry fantasy flecks playfully decorate the flower face, and occasionally, blue streaks also join in. The standard foliage is large growing, dark green, with a red reverse, and quilted. Awarded "2nd BEST NEW CULTIVAR", at the 2006 AVSA convention.


Wrangler's Jealous Heart (6225) 05/20/1986 (W. Smith) Double pansy, ruffled/light pink and green edge. Variegated dark green and pink, ruffled, hairy. Large


Harlequin (Holtkamp) 6947 - Single fringed white with purplish red edges. Medium green foliage.


Chanticleer (1386) 08/05/1963 (Eyerdom) Double light pink. Dark green, ovate, pointed, quilted

So, here's what we've got on the shelves now. Almost all of the babies are out of the 1 oz. plastic solo cups and are in "big girl" pots (2" plastic square pots) now. A couple have graduated to bigger Oyama planters, but not many.

Dazzling Fantasyland. I have 2 or 3, but only one is this big and blooming.

Sweet Lady Love. This one propagated ridiculously well - I have about 6 of them. None have bloomed yet, but there are buds forming. I love the ruffly leaves on it.

Sinister Shadow. Only have 1, and one more that I'm not sure is going to make it. I just noticed buds on the healthy one today. The variegation on the leaves is so nice; I'm hoping the baby survives so I can have 2 healthy ones.

Rob's Vanilla Trail. Not one of the babies I grew from leaves, but so cute that I wanted to share.

This one doesn't have a variety name, but it is one that I grew from a leaf off a momma plant. Unfortunately the momma plant died recently, so I'm doubly glad that the baby did so well. I have another of this kind in my office growing in hydroton.

Silver Smoke. This is another that propagated like mad. I have four and they'll all doing really well, although this one was the first to bloom.

Outer Limits. This is the craziest of all of the ones I grew from leaves. Off of two leaves, I wound up with eight healthy plants. It got to the point where I had to throw away some of the babies simply because I was running out of space!

Here's a shot of the second shelf, taken from the left:

And here's one from the right:

Here's the first shelf, from the right. The pot on the lower right has lithops in it.


And finally, the first shelf from the front:

That's it for African Violet stuff. Things are progressing nicely on the balcony, but it's hardly photo-worthy out there yet. New clematis shoots are just barely starting to come out, the tulips are starting to come out of hiding, and the few crocuses I planted are blooming. I have high hopes for the clematis this year. It's their third year, which is supposedly when they really take off. Hopefully last year's set-back won't effect this year's growth!

I'm a genius!

The sun's been so intense lately that it's been frying leaves on my african violets.

Can't move the shelves to a different window... don't have any others that get any light.

Can't do anything to the window, since it's actually a sliding glass door.

What to do?

Why, tape some parchment paper across the back of the shelves, of course! Voila, the light is filtered and won't burn the plants anymore!

I'm so proud of myself for thinking of it!

House Painting is BAD

Well, it wasn't as good a summer on my balcony as I'd hoped it would be. 

I received notice on Monday, June 16th, that my building was getting painted and that my balcony would need to be cleared off by Wednesday morning. I spent all of Monday and Tuesday nights carefully unwinding the stems of my clematis from the railings on the balcony, then moving everything into my living and dining rooms.

Since most of my clematis are fairly young, they didn't have so much growth that unwinding them was all that difficult. I definitely lost a few stems to breakage, though, and any buds that had been forming died off from being inside for a week and then going back out in the sun again. Only one of my type III clematis - the Vinosa Violacea - bloomed for me after that. The others never started putting out buds again after the first set died off.

Ah well, there's always next year.

My African Violets, however, have been having a banner year. For the first time ever I've successfully grown babies - a ton of them, in fact! I've also been getting far more blooms on the adult plants than I've ever gotten before, but I've been awful about finding time to take pictures and post them. 

Pictures of the babies. They're all in little plastic solo cups until they get strong enough for bigger pots. (You can click any picture in this post to see a larger version.)

Some of the older babies are already big enough for "adult" pots. Clockwise from top left: LLG Dazzling Fantasyland, LLG Outer Orbit (LLGOO), an unknown (from the supermarket), two more LLGOO, and LLG Allison's Laughter. LLGOO has been amazing - I've gotten more babies from its leaves than from any other. I probably have 15 or so!

Rob's Boolaroo (left) and Ness' Ruffled Skies (right). Both of these have been in bloom for months with no sign of letting up anytime soon:

Other plants - avocado (left) and hoya (right). I've been waiting for over a year to see whether this hoya will survive here, so I'm pretty excited to see new growth on it. That new stem has burst out over the last couple of weeks and grows about 1/2 inch per day!

Here's the clematis update - Venosa Violacea is covered in blooms. Unbelievable that this was just a baby plant in a 2" pot when I bought it last fall. 

Here is Asao #1. It's almost reached the top of the arch and I'm hoping to get a second round of blooms from it before the fall rains hit:

Other things I'm growing outside...

A coworker brought in a bunch of baby tomato plants about a month ago that she started from seed. I took one home, punched a hole in the bottom of a hanging planter (I've run out of room on the floor of the balcony!), and decided to try my luck. There's only one stem on the plant, but there are a few blooms coming out. The weight of the tomato will likely break the stem, I'm guessing. Too bad. It would have been nice to be able to grow tomatoes this way!

I'm also trying my hand with strawberries, but I started too late to get any fruit this year. 


I went a little crazy with nasturtium seeds in early spring, and am getting a ton of blooms now:
 

Here's what I did with my window boxes this year - petunias, snapdragon, and lobelia, although most of the lobelia fried in the sun (as visible to the right of the petunias in this pic):

Finally, here are some pics showing the whole balcony. There's a lot of green and very few other colors, but I have high hopes for next year!

First clematis blooms of 2008

Blooms on both my Asao opened up this week. Yay!

Last year my only clem to bloom was my Mme Julia Correvon, so I'm pretty excited. :0)

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Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival

Went to the tulip festival in Woodburn, OR a few weeks ago. My pictures were okay, but my friend Mario took a bunch that were so amazing that I can't get over them. Here are the best of the bunch: