It blooms!

African Violet #1

You may remember this African violet from January, when it was just a leaf stuck in a plastic cup full of vermiculite. I transplanted my cuttings to terracotta pots a couple of months ago, and while I lost one plant in the process (the water-grown plant seen in April), the other two are looking very healthy, and this one is sporting delicate purple blooms.

In all, I started with eight cuttings and ended with two plants. I think I could have done better if I'd 1) trimmed my stems to 1" before sticking them in either vermiculite or water, 2) moved the plants to potting soil sooner, and 3) been more careful about keeping water off the leaves.

It was a fun experiment! I hope I'll have a chance to start African violets from leaf cuttings again.

African violet update

African violet propagation in water

It took a bit longer than I expected, but the African violet leaves that I talked about in January have finally sprouted baby plants! This goes for both the leaves planted in vermiculite as well as the leaves left in water.

You can see what the vermiculite cups look like now at Flickr. Those leaves just broke the surface of the vermiculite last week. They look much sturdier than the leaves growing in water.

I'm going to try transplanting the water-propagated plants to well-moistened vermiculite when they get a little larger to help them develop soil roots.

---
Cross-posted to Vox.