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Re: INDOOR-GARDENING digest 616

How far should the fluorescent lights be from African Violets?  The lights
are on for fourteen hours a day, but the new leaves on the variegated ones
are not variegated.  Perhaps the shelves are too far apart?

My Christmas Cactus is in full bloom.  Is there a Hallowe'en Cactus or
should it have been kept in a dark place for awhile?

Thanks for any advice.

Vera Diehl
villager@slip.net

-----Original Message-----
From: James Gray <jjg2@c-cor.com>
To: indoor-gardening@prairienet.org <indoor-gardening@prairienet.org>
Date: Wednesday, July 22, 1998 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: INDOOR-GARDENING digest 616


>Dee2540@aol.com wrote:
>>
>> Hi everyone:
>>      I am back again with a not so bug problem.  I have an African violet
and
>> have had several before this one.  When this violet was bought it had
>> beautiful flowers on it that lasted for quite some time.  They have never
>> bloomed again.  I have tried everything from fertilizers, fish
emulsifiers, to
>> a rusty nail placed in the soil.  How can I get this violet to bloom
short of
>> singing it to sleep at night?  It is in a Northeast window with the
blinds
>> halfway down to shade it.
>>      I would appreciate any words of advice.  Also I have heard of a new
>> growing medium of gel consistancy instead of soil for plant growing.
Anyone
>> hear of it.  It is being manufactured in Texas.
>> Dee
>
>
>It's probably not going to flower in a shaded Northeast window.  It
>needs more light.  You don't need to shade a north or east window in any
>case, really.  The thing you want to shade most houseplants from is full
>afternoon sun, and north and east windows don't get any full sun after
>about 11:30 am.  The indirect light that comes in a north window doesn't
>need to be filtered or shaded.
>
>Flowering house plants fall into two groups: light-influenced and
>temperature-influenced.  African violets are light-influenced bloomers.
>They need a certain number of hours of a certain level of light every
>day to bloom and keep blooming.  That's why they work so well under
>fluorescents.  I'd move the plant to a more eastern or even a western
>window.  I'd filter the west window, though.  I don't think you need to
>actually shade, just put a sheer fabric curtain in between the plant and
>the glass.  That should cut down the intensity enough to make the plant
>comfortable but not so much that you defeat your purpose in putting the
>plant in that window.  An east or southeast window, though is probably
>best.  My violet is in a southeast window (in a candy jar terrarium,
>though) and is starting to put out buds after being almost destroyed by
>an attempt to remove suckers about four months ago.
>
>Good luck!
>--
>Jim Gray
>Quality Assurance, Tipton
>jjg2@c-cor.com
>
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