This post started me re-evaluating my violets... and I also watched Annie's first podcast (All About African Violets) and she lost her entire collection to over fertilization problems... and I really wonder if I have been over fertilizing. I have been fertilizing every week, and I have been using exactly the amount that the bottle says to use (10 drops for 1 quart).. and maybe even a few drops extra. And my crowns are tight... and I have been noticing that the leaves seem a bit brittle. But my soil doesn't have salts standing on the surface much at all. There's a few older ones that do a bit, but not bad. I don't know? Maybe I'm off on a paranoid limb here? :-) But I have been noticing that the ones that have tight crowns are the noid optimaras! Is it possible that they aren't getting enough light? I haven't the foggiest. I thought that too much light = leggy growth, not tight growth!

I'm sounding like a clueless newbie! I guess that's what I am. lol

Su,

i always see the orange crystals or a white crust on the edge of the pot, but i don't know if they necessarily have to show up.

with my optimaras (and i am in no way an expert on them, they do worse for me than anything else) i find they need a lot less light than my other plants. not that they won't survive sitting on a south facing window sill, but they go crunchy and "cabbagey".

if you're worried about the fertilizer, maybe you want to leech your pots (run water through them until it runs clear), and then reduce the fertilizer by half.

i'm a bit sceptical on the way people talk about fertilizers though. they talk about half the recommended dose, or 1/4 tsp per gallon - yet noone even looks at the different numbers. I'm no expert, but i assume 15-15-15 has twice as much fertilizer in it as say a 7-7-7. (I really should look it up). - that would impact how much you use hugely.

Karin

thanks Karen! thats exactly it. there are several that are going "crunchy"... and they are optimaras. i have a couple that seem to really like the higher light in a morning sun east window... but i moved most of the Os to a shaded west window about a week ago and im curious if they are happier there. by far, my nicest looking plants are ching dynasty, chicago flair, willodene, instant attraction, and a noid double light blue. thats the extent of my named standards! im curious to see how everything else grows when all the Opt and otherwise leaves and babies grow up and bloom.

i use 7-7-7 fertilizer... the miracle grow brand. its an actual african violet fertilizer. i read in the Kent and Joyce stork book that you should water with un-fertilized water once a month just to flush the soil. im gonna go off fertilizer for a couple weeks and just flush the soil.

heres my "lettuce patch" at the west window. tomy inexperienced eye, everything actually looks pretty happy here. minus the two huge scraggly vintage optimara suckers someone just gave me. :-P

Leggy plants mean not enough light.

Having lived through over-fertilizing my Av's (and it taking 2 years to come back from that disaster) I don't think I will forget that more is not better. What happened to me was accidental - I ran out of the fertilizer brand I had used successfully for years and bought a different brand that was highly recommended. It however did not come in a lovely little bottle with the squeeze bulb dropper, so I refilled my old bottle. And the dosage of the new fert was not the same as the old one. Somewhere down the line I had a senior moment (all right, longer than a moment - more like senior months) and I reverted to the old dosage with the new fertilizer. First symptom was the tight centers, the brittle leaves. I couldn't figure it out. Blooms started looking odd. Then I began seeing the orange crystals on a few of the plants' leaves - (but not all had that symptom and I missed it for a long while.) Then it finally dawned on me! Yikes!! Let me tell you, to bring an AV back from that level of over-fertilization takes a long, long time. There were even some that after a year of babying would not grow right and I had to pitch them. Some I saved the best leaves and restarted - and they turned out OK, luckily, but it was a long time starting over. Anyway, sorry to ramble on, but I wanted to make my point that too much fertilizer can be really bad for your plants. "Fertilize weakly, weekly" is sometimes quoted - and I've taken it to heart. I now use less than half the recommended dose in my watering, and at least once a month I water with plain water and now my violets are thriving and blooming. YMMV - but Sue when I read that you sometimes use a bit more than the bottle recommends, I was worried for you! Please do measure carefully as I'd hate for you to ever experience something like I went through! Every expert I've heard and read recommends using only a portion of the manufacturer's recommended dosage. All these successful growers can't be blowing smoke.

And Karin, you're going to make me go dig out my old Master Gardener manual and look up the numbers in fertilizer. My recollection is foggy, but I do not think that it is correct that 7-7-7 is less than half the strength of 15-15-15. I'll check on that and get back to you.

aegis1000 - thank you! That's what I thought.

Anne - Thanks so much! It's good to hear that. I just recently watched the first podcast in "All About African Violets", and she mentioned that she lost her entire collection to over-fertilizing! That really got me scared, and I started looking closely at my collection. I don't think anything is over-fertilized yet... but I am going to just water with straight water and no fertilizer for a few weeks, just to MAKE SURE. Thanks for sharing!!

Su