You got it absolutely right - it is getting too much water. And you did the right treatment - dried them up.

The way I think the situation can be improved - find coarse or x-coarse perlite. Not small to dust. Put a 3/4" layer of this perlite on the bottom. Do not have perlite - use packing peanuts. Add even more perlite to the mix.

Normally your proportion is right - but small to dust perlite is close to useless. If it is the only one you have access to - take it outside in a colander - and rinse the dust part out. The purpose of perlite - is to create a structure in a soil - so there are air pockets for the roots to breath. Not much of it from the small particles.

Right now - the amount of wet soil is excessive for the small plants. I would keep them sparingly bottom watered for a while - and eventually repot with a layer of perlite on the bottom.

just a little tweaking....

i.

Let me put my two cents in here for you. I just started wick watering AV's a while back. Prior to that I had used a variety of methods in hopes of finding something that would work well and easily. After nearly a year of successes and failures, wick watering became the preferred method.

Wick watering can be incredibly simple. The right consistency of "soilless" soil, the right water and the right size and type of wick and it basically takes care of itself. This type of watering also begs you to introduce your plant food to your plant via the wick and your water reservoir.

Before I tell you what I think and do, I should say that there are a bunch of folks on this site that are infinitely more experienced than I am when it comes to raising AV's.

I happen to have a couple dozen that I have experimented on for the last year or so and I think what I do (at least as far as wick watering goes) would work for anybody and everybody.

I make my own soil. I buy the smaller size bags of perlite, vermiculite and peat. I use equal amounts of all three. NO miracle gro for me. I haven't found more than a few experienced AV folks who use MG in any shape or form for their AV's. Maybe other plants, but not AV's. You decide.

Your wick looks quite a bit too large. Could just be the perspective of the camera shot but it looks 3 or 4 times thicker than what I use. The next time you are at Lowes or Home Depot, look at the masons string. It is what I and a good many other folks use for AV's and it is just about perfect for a 4 or 5" pot. If for some reason, you have a very large AV, you could use two pieces of string. I have had to do that for a couple of my largest standards.

If you change the consistency of your potting soil and reduce the diameter of the wicking material your using, I think your "too wet soil" issue will be gone.

Good luck and enjoy the lessons that your learn while raising these pesky plants!

Jeff- you have an inquisitive mind - you will be always striving for perfection. And experimenting - some times improving. some times it will be a blind alley.

The Cornell mix you are using - do you adjust it for pH? Peat can be acid and it can have different pH from bale to bale.

Yup - Cornell mix is much better than Miracle Grow, especially if you wick. Wetting agent which is present in all ready made mixes - is not wick-friendly.

The fact that some people grew the AVs for 60 years - doesn't automatically mean that they spent this 60 years improving their technique. Some just did it the same way all this time. The lady in my first club was lamenting how wonderful life was when you could use Banrot in a soil and DDT on the top. Ouch.

Good morning all. Depending on how you look at it, I am fortunate that I don't really have an acid concern when it comes to PH. I live in Florida where all the aqueducts are naturally constructed of limestone. The PH of my water (soil too for obvious reasons) is over 9 on the PH scale. I only recently discovered the issue and began correcting for PH a couple of months ago. Thank goodness for information here regarding these issues. I was just starting to see signs of lock-up when I caught it and made the necessary changes.

I think if you start with pH 6.4 - the water will maintain it - but if your peat will come at pH.5, perlite is neutral, vermiculite is slightly alkaline - I bet your soil will always be out of whack.

Since you got the litmus strips now - why don't you check your pH in one pot monthly - and make a curve- pH raise or drop depending on time. There will be probably changes related to the season - more rain, less rain, ambient temperature.

We all need to retire in Tallahassee area - and start a new club. I am making a motion - Jeff Zenner for a President in a new club, "Violets of Panhandle".

Pretty funny you should mention that. Since I was unable to accurately (considering the simple basic nature of my test strips) test my "soil", I bought another tool meant for measuring the ph of soil. So far my observations have been that as long as I am willing to accept a range of PH, say from 6 to 7, my mixture is viable from batch to batch. If I want to get really anal, I can dial it in a little closer but I have not yet gotten around to that. A good many of the botanists that I have read seem to think that the AV's could thrive within this range of PH. (Hopefully they're right!) At this point, I am just grateful that the subject of PH came up here on this forum which prompted me to check mine.

Irina, correct me if I'm wrong...but weren't the originally discovered habitat of some the species, limestone cavities with the rotted debris filling them? That would indicate a ph tolerance I would think. Acidic rotting leaves, and alkaline cavities.

Ha! My thoughts exactly! If only the african natives could see what we do to grow these same plants that grow in their ditches!

No ditches there... they do not grow in the open. There is somewhere a data on what pH numbers were in a natural habitat of each species - and my aging memory sends me to the article by our leading expert on Saintpaulia species Dr.Jeff Smith

http://www.gesneriads.ca/saintart.htm

There 2 factors in their habitat - yes - limestone is alkaline - but frequent rains actually wash the salts out of the soil - and you can have acidic soil at the bottom of a limestone hill. If the rocks are granite - the result will be acid. pH 4.8-7.3 - depending on a species.

There is a webinar on Saintpaulia species by Dr. Jeff Smith - you can purchase it on a Gesneriad Society website (and more on other gesneriads)

https://the-gesneriad-society.myshopify.com/collections/webinars

We purchase these webinars as programs for the club. Good stuff.

Yes, I understand, I was jokingly making the point that they do and did grow wild in some areas of Africa whereas I have barely managed to keep mine alive on purpose with considerable effort.

Wow. I went to a couple of those links. A lifetime of reading. I guess Ill have to print some of that up so I can read it at bedtime. Good stuff!

We all killed our first ones. But it is a challenge and an interesting journey to become a better grower.

Life time - you are kidding - it is not a rocket science.

Have fun reading!

Thank you all. I appreciate the help! I think I will have to make my own mix since the only AV mix in the stores around here is the MG. It's easier to find straight peat. Will have to look for the coarser perlite. Since I just repotted them how long should I wait to repot again so I don't overly stress them and lesson their chances of recouping since three have been repotted twice already within a couple weeks time?

So far I have managed to maime and mangle a bunch of AV's and they always let me know it fairly quickly. Repotting for me has never been one of those problems. If your soil is tightly compacted around the primary root ball, maybe; but I doubt it due to the recent timeline. (Another reason to make your own soil because you won't have that problem.)

Were it me, I guess I'd wait a bit and make sure all hands were on deck after the last repot. Then I'd go for it. No time like the present to make life changing improvements!

Thanks Jeff. Will wait a little to make sure they are up to being repotted and then switch the medium.

Here's a photo of the wick for the 2" pots. Is the wick too big?

It looks smaller than the last picture you had of one of your wicks. Try it. Keep an eye on it to make sure it's working.

Heck, Ill shake a plant out of its planter in a heartbeat if I really want to know whats going on. Be gentle and you can easily determine if your wick is working properly w/o disrupting anything.

Do a search here and you'll find more info than you could ever read about wick watering. If you haven't already, presoak your wick in water that has had a drop or two of dish soap put in. Other than that, maybe confine your experiments to one or two plants that don't mean all that much to you.

To me, it's like cooking, which I also enjoy. It takes a good recipe, a good cook and a little luck to make that dish perfect!

That's a pic of the wicks I am using now. They came with the 2" pots so I thought they were the correct size for that small a plant. I can easily pull them out and unravel them and re-insert them with a crochet hook. How thin should I go for mini (one plant) and semi-mini (five plants) violets? All six are in 2" pots.

Yes, I primed the wicks in water and a drop of soap)

Thanks, I have been enjoying reading a lot here on wicking. Very informative!

so that wick is from the dandy pot..not a new one you repurchased (want to make sure i'm understanding correctly)

Yes, the 2" Dandy pots with wicks. I haven't changed them. All the plants seem to be doing well except for the one that is still struggling with limp stems. But if the wicks are not right for their size I don't want them to start suffering too.

~ Another thing I just read that I'm doing wrong: "...you don't have to run your wicks all the way up..." I have mine threaded straight up on the side of the pot as directed on the Dandy Pot site. :(

i've got them both up the side and just down at the bottom..ive seen this done either way...not even sure if that one is right or more wrong than the other...

i'm going to leave whether to thin out that wick or not to someone more experienced..i dont want to give you wrong advice

While I don't have any "Dandy Pots", I have looked at them for sale in various places. It struck me at the time that the shoestring size wicks provided w the pots were VERY large in diameter.

I am not saying you should use the same wicks that I use or in the way I use them. I am saying that you seem to be doing wick watering in a similar fashion to how I do it and mine has been working well for some time.

I put a piece of masonry string through the small hole in the bottom center of the plastic pot. I pull it up, put the loose end over the edge of the pot and then insert the potting soil and the plant into the cup w the string still hanging over the edge. Once everybody is tucked in nicely, I grab the string that is hanging out the bottom of the cup and pull it down until the tag end of the string that was hanging outside the cup now has just disappeared under the soil. Im done.

Dandy Pots are doable - mason twine #18 or acrylic yarn.

The second consideration - they are quite deep - not "azalea pot" shape - and the holes in a bottom are relatively small - so to provide good aeration for the roots - I would recommend a layer of a coarse perlite in a bottom and a good amount of perlite in a soil.

Third consideration - they are NOT cheap, space consuming and require attention when watering - so they are more appropriate for the small collection.

The way how Jeff is interested in trying different things - I predict the ever increasing amount of shelves with fluorescent lights, bales of soil and hundreds plants on wicks all over. All blooming like crazy.

Jeff, I set up my wicks like you do except the Dandy pots don't have a center hole. They have 4 small holes around the bottom. The wicks for the 2"pots I have are a lot thinner than shoestring size but I will get masonry string and switch them. I'd rather not worry over the current wicks. I want to give my violets the best chance of thriving and I appreciate the experience of you guys so it will give me more peace of mind. :)

Thanks for your help, Irina! I don't have room for a big collection (my hope is to eventually have maybe 12 or so minis total) so I don't mind splurging on the Dandy pots. I'll have to be content to drool over the huge set ups of the big collectors while being happy to fuss over my littles and learn how to make them thrive.

Yes, the next time I repot I will add a layer of perlite to the bottom and 50% added to the medium. I don't like that the MG mix has fertilizer since I'd rather be more in control of when to feed so will make my own mix next time. I would repot now but want them to get a little more established before I disturb them again.

Good news! My Rob's Astro Zombie that was struggling is starting to firm up her leaf stems which is very encouraging. She has a ways to go but this is the first good sign I've seen.

I've read differing views about whether or not to let the wick reservoirs dry out between fillings. Is it just personal preference? If it is better to let them dry out how dry do you let them get?

A consideration that Irene was addressing was the size of DandyPots. They seem to run on the large size considering they are marketed as African Violet pots. The largest standard I have is in a pot smaller than the DandyPot one you showed in one of your first pics. The large pots will likely work and produce healthy but probably not great flowering plants for at least a while until the plants roots can grow into the container.

(Just an idea, but since you're planning on repotting anyway, why don't you just buy a couple inexpensive small plastic pots, cut holes in tupperware and make your own handy pots and let your plants grow into those larger DandyPots somewhere down the road.) In my opinion, you'll see better and more flowers quicker that way. Just a thought.

If you like the idea of wick watering and the concept of the DandyPot, there are a lot of less expensive and perhaps more efficient and productive ways to go. There is a ton of info here on various household items that are being used for wick watering.

I think you are on the right track as far as soil and wicks go and it will only be a matter of time before you have some really nice plants to show for it.

Oh wow....the 2" Dandy pots are too big for minis? I had no idea! You have a standard violet in a smaller than 2" pot? So how much smaller should I go for minis?

Everything I read said minis and semi-minis should be in 2 -2.5" pots. Mine are all in 2" pots so thought the 2" Dandy pots would be fine. Boy, I have a LOT to learn.

It depends on the mini. By keeping the pot smaller, you keep the mini smaller. If you give them a bigger pot (within reason), you're promoting a bigger plant.

Thanks dbarron. Mine are five semi-minis and one mini so from what I read I expect the semis to be between 6-8" in diam when fully mature. I wouldn't want to grow them bugger than that so thought the 2" pots were the way to go to help the root system grow. Will switch to smaller diy wicking system if that's the better way to go.

Those 2" pots should work fine. They sure didn't look like two incher's to me though. Go for it! Maybe don't fill the pot up to the top with soil if you can avoid it, on the first repot. It will leave u w a little room for future repots.

Ok, thanks Jeff.

What about letting the violets dry out between reservoir filling? If so how dry?

I always had problems getting the wicks going again if I let them dry out (which lead to me stopping messing with wicks at all). But that's just me :)

If I understand your question correctly, you want to know if I let my wicking reservoir run dry in between filling them up. No. I keep them constantly full with a cleaning every now and then.

I used to have a regimen like that when I top watered for a while. I don't know of anybody who does it while wick watering. The proper size wick only pulls out enough water for the plant to eat and grow. No need to periodically dry the plant out. Again, unless you are having a wick related problem, no need for that.

You're gonna do fine with wick watering.

i'm with jeff...never let mine dry out either

jeff...i've read where you should run water through the soil from top..and I think its been suggested to me ....i guess it's like bottom watering and they suggest to leach out salts etc every so often..

Awesome! Thanks Jeff and Heather. I feel drying them out after they have established a good wicking pattern would stress them out and then they'd have to reestablish a whole new pattern again once the reservoirs are refilled. I like the consistency of wicking once it's established well. Glad I got that one right! ;)

Yeah Heather, I too have read that. I just don't do it. I currently use a totally organic, fish product, plant food that causes very little salinity in my soil. I have an EC meter that I have used a number of times and It always came up within parameters. I guess I should check it again sometime.

I have intentions of changing plant food soon to the Optimara brand food. I will be checking EC more often once I do. Rinsing won't hurt em but what a pain!

Quick question please....

I found a perlite online that has no fertilizer in it and which is also coarser than the MG perlite I used for my violets' last repot. Is it ok to repot again since my violets seem to have adjusted well since switching them over to wick watering or should I wait longer? As it shows above I last repotted them on July 22.