Question: I purchased a couple of your miniature violets, ‘Rob’s Whoa Nellie’ and ‘Rob’s Cool Fruit’, about five months ago. I have both plants under florescent lights at my office. They get 8-plus hours of light, are both on reservoirs, with violet food. They have lots of leaves, in fact, they have an abundance of sucker leaves that keep coming up in the middle, but not one bloom. What do you suggest I do to help them?
Answer: You’re right, they should have bloomed long ago. There seem to be two possible problems. First, how close are the florescent lights to the plants? If these are ceiling lights used to illuminate the office, they are not getting nearly enough light to bloom well. For miniature violets, a two-tube florescent light fixture needs to be within 8-12″ of the plant surface, for 12-13 hours a day–less if there is good supplemental light provided by windows in the office. If this is the case, you need to find a way of providing more light for your plants. How about a small table-top light fixture for the top of that filing cabinet in the corner?
The second problem is those “abundance of sucker leaves” in the middle of the plant. Suckers and blooms tend to be mutually exclusive. More of one means less of the other. Be diligent in removing any growth from the leaf axils that you know isn’t a flower bud. Why they are appearing in the “center” is another problem. These are the worst kind of suckers, since they can’t be easily removed without damaging the true growing center of the plant. Often, they will appear when the growing center of the plant is damaged (by accident or neglect), or otherwise can no longer grow. Other times, it is simply a genetic characteristic of the plant, though we’ve never found these two varieties to have this problem. If suckers are continued to be produced from the center of the plant, despite your attempts to remove them, you have two choices. If the suckers are being produced due to the center having been damaged, allow one of these suckers to fully develop, then start another plant from it. If the condition is genetic, there’s not much you can do besides surrender–it will likely continue to produce these “crown” suckers.