Thanks Ron
I have had the same problem with the tight crowns. I'll try it starting today.
Cork

After the month, I started using 1/4 tsp of fertilizer per gallon of water.

Ron

It doesn't hurt to flush your plants with clear water every now and then... which helps remove accumulations of salts and fertilizers

Speaking of which...
I just bought the Optimara fertilizer. Does anyone know whether the formula (1/2t per gallon) they give you is for once/month watering or every time watering. The other fertilizer that I've been using has dilutions for both. This just has the one.

Feegle

Thanks for the tip----since I'm having similar problems on a few plants I'll give it a try.

I do not fertilize my plants via the soil.. I foliar feed my plants.. this way I do not have fertilize salts to worry about. It is to my knowledge that the plants will absorb 95% of the fertilize via the leaves and only about 45% through the roots. After reading this, I decided to foliar feed my violets with a fine mister.

I mist my plants every day with water and only twice a week with the fertilize. Even though I wick all my plants but the babies, this has shown a tremendous different since I started the misting schedule. Plus the misting keeps the humidity much higher.

All the mature plants are blooming heavier than before and the leaves are beautiful.. clean and healthy looking. I do not have to worry about over fertilizing this way and the salts are not there to harm the roots and plant.

This eliminates the flushing of the pots to rid the salt build-up.

When a plant blooms for the first time, I let it bloom to verify it is true to description. After the verification, I dis-bud it for one month. The reason I do this.. a lot of my plants bloom when they are very young and the plant need to grow more.. blooming take a lot of the strength from the plant to develop good leaves. After the month, I let the plant bloom all it wants, but remove any spent blooms once they start withering the least bit. No sense for that bloom to take from the mother plant who is working so hard to produce more blooms to enjoy.

Some times I will take the bloom stalk and root it.. it will produce babies/suckers.. this is not an easy task, but it is worth trying for all of us. This way we will have babies faster than from a leaf.. it is like a sucker on the bloom stalk. If you have chimeras, this is another way to get babies than to wait for suckers.

Another way is to cut the blooms off just above the tiny little leaves on the bloom stalk.. leave it alone.. sometimes it will produce little plants.. then root them.

Tea

I have found that overly congested centers can also be caused by the plants receiving too much light especially , when under a double gro-lite set-up, but usually in that case though the flowering is not retarded. Also cyclamen mites can cause congested , but usually deformed leaves and excessive hairiness on the leaves. As for the "foliar feeding", I wonder how the very fine misting gets past those numerous hairs on the leaves as I've found most water or liquids don't penetrate past the hairs but just sit on the very tips of the hairs, or do you use a much heavier spray to really penetrate to the surface?? I'd never heard about excess fertilizing retarding flowering, but I guess that's possible!! I'd always read that !/4 strength at each watering would be fine?

Well, my tight centers can't be from too much fert, so just this morning I've begun an experiment. One of my two light stands is probably too short, and my lights too close (the sunburned leaves is another clue), so one shelf will be reduced to 5 hours a day, and the other shelf has had one bulb removed and will continue to get 9 hours. We'll see which does better; I'm hoping it's the shorter hours one, because I'm fairly certain taking one bulb out isn't great for the fixture.

Korina (wishing there was such a thing as a 36" three-bulb fluorescent fixture)