I have a friend who got this African violet from a family member who passed so she's trying to take good care of it. She mentioned it has stem issues and sent me the picture below.
I'm pretty good with most houseplants so she came to me for help but I don't know enough about African violets to give her advice. I also tried googling it and didn't get any solid answers. So I wanted to ask you wonderful people who probably know more about them than me lol
I thought maybe it wasn't buried deep enough but I can't tell if it's dried old roots or if it's old leaves on the stem? I didn't tell her right away to bury it deeper because I wasn't sure if African violets have a specific depth they like to be buried at or if they were the type of plant you can bury the stem deeper and it just happily sprouts more roots. I'm also wondering if it could be stretching for more light but I don't want it to get too much and burn either. 🤔 Please feel free to correct me if you know 😄
Any ideas on what's causing this and what to do to take better care of it?
Thanks much for taking the time to read and any thoughts are welcome! 🙏
by MadamNineTails
2 Comments
Older african violets often develop long necks as they grow older. Which can be fixed by cutting the trunk and removing the older leaves before burying the plant deeper in the soil (and then placing a dome over it for a month to let it regrow the roots).
If you are better with water propagation, you can also re-root the plant in water too – just make sure only the tip of the stem is in the jar of water.
Also, the plant started leaning a lot to one side because when you place it at the window only one side is getting light. The trick to preventing this from happening in the future is to rotate the pot slightly everytime you water it
The way this looks with the thinner stem and the smaller, spaced out leaves, it looks more like a trailing AV. Trailing AV leaves are the size of a semi miniature. I’m including a picture of the inside of my trailing av to show how it looks.
https://preview.redd.it/f7s7b71n79og1.jpeg?width=2268&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=56ece3ec06ee5d383fa3486d0d328ab31865eb16
I can also include some standard and miniature long necks since it’s time to repot, if you are interested.
Trailing AVs need three crowns in the same pot to be show quality. I use the Japanese method for trailing AVs because they were exhausting me trying to maintain them before.