Re-Potting African Violets

Our Front End Manager Jeanette shows us step by step how to re-pot a gorgeous and prospering African Violet that Head Cashier Corinna has brought in from home! Follow these steps, and as always if you have any questions don't hesitate to call us or stop on by!

First here is a picture of the mother plant. Notice how many leaves are coming off of this plant, and how small the pot is.  It is growing well and ready to be split and re-potted.

As you can see here if you look beneath the larger leaves you can see smaller leaves starting to come up.  This is a sign that there is more than one crown of the plant, and therefore can most likely be split into numerous plants.

Next, Jeanette demonstrates to you what two separate crowns looks like. If you look in the middle of the plant, centered between her thumbs you can see where the stems are coming from two different bunches, or crowns.  You can sort of tell that they have two different root systems going.  This is where you split the plant apart.

Alright, she has them split.  These are two of the baby plants, there is also a third plant which is the original mother plant.

Here is a closer look at one of the baby plant's root systems.  You can see that they all lead down to one root bunch and can be easily re-potted.

This is one of the baby plant's all potted up.  There are a few things to remember when potting up the baby plant.  For starters you want to make sure that you plant it fairly deep in the soil.  Wherever there is a "wound" where it was disconnected from the mother plant should sprout another stem.  The other thing is that you don't want to pack the soil around the violet.  African Violets like their soil fairly loose, and it will be easier for the plant to re-root in loose soil.

There you have it the mother plant posing with it's two new baby plants!

During the process of re-potting you will most likely have several stems of leaves that fall of, and have no roots.  If you would like to go further and take those leaves and try to root them, Jeanette shows us a few different ways!

The first one is a little bit tricky, but with practice it is quite effective! Flip the leaf upside down.  Take a sharp scissors or exacto knife and cut each vein on the leaf once.  Cut into, but do this without cutting through to the other side of the leaf.  

Then place the leaf face up in some soil, so that the cut veins are touching the soil.  Place it in a small greenhouse setting, and keep the leaf very moist.  Then each place that the vein was cut, a new root system will grow!

Another way to root the leaves is to take a sharp scissors or knife and cut a slit in the exposed or "wounded" end of them stem in a criss-cross pattern.  Then you can put the stem in a vase with water, and it will grow roots from each one of the four pieces.













Here are the four pieces coming off of the stem.









Well there you have it, several great ways to re-pot, split and root your African Violets!  Even though it is a little bit harder to do the method of rooting where you cut the plant veins Jeanette does suggest this way.  While rooting stems in water is easy, the plant loses a membrane in doing so.  This means the plant is going to have a little bit harder time rooting and growing strong once it is placed into the soil.

We hope this helps, and please feel free to ask us questions!  You can leave a comment on this blog, call us, stop in, or even leave us a Facebook message!