Soil
The native coastal soil is acidic, infertile, and sandy. Decaying natural matter enriches it with vitamins to assist blooming.
Select an African violet potting combine. It can have the suitable 5.5 to six.5 pH degree, natural matter for wholesome foliage and flowering, and inorganic matter for drainage and moisture retention.
African Violet Premium Potting Combine
This product from Midwest Fireside is a ready-to-use combination of peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite. It’s light-weight, well-draining, and moisture-retentive.
African Violet Premium Potting Combine is accessible from Midwest Fireside by way of Amazon in four- and eight-quart luggage.
Water
In its pure surroundings, gloxinia grows throughout the wettest seasons of the 12 months.
As a houseplant, it wants constant moisture with out oversaturation from spring by summer time.
When the highest inch of soil feels dry, water deeply till it runs from the drainage holes.
Use tepid water, neither too heat nor too cool, to keep away from shock. Take care to water over the soil, not the foliage or tuber, to inhibit fungal illness and rotting.
Our information to watering houseplants has extra info.
Fertilizer
To assist optimum blooming, feed every time you water utilizing a well-balanced liquid plant meals diluted to 1 / 4 power.
A product with an NPK ratio of 10-10-10 is enough.
The place to Purchase
The time to buy seeds or tubers is in late winter or early spring. You’ll discover an array of named cultivars, together with hybrid collection, from which to decide on.
Hybrid cultivars have the biggest flowers and broaden the pure colour palette with pastels and variegated schemes.
The Brocade Sequence was developed by the Sakata Seed Company and provides a mixture of double-petal blossoms in shades of blue, burgundy, purple, crimson, and white, usually with white margins.
Brocade Combine Gloxinia Seeds
The foliage is darkish inexperienced. Permit 20 to 24 weeks for maturity from seed.
Brocade Combine gloxinia seeds are accessible from Exterior Satisfaction by way of Amazon.
Further cultivars you could come throughout when procuring embody:
‘Carangola’ has white blossoms with purple throats and olive-green leaves.
‘Purple’ has purple flowers and darkish inexperienced leaves.
Nevertheless, it’s extra prone to discover extra generic labels that merely listing their colour.
Upkeep
For a fuller, extra uniform look, some of us “disbud,” or pinch off the primary two spring buds to encourage clusters of blossoms fairly than particular person flowers.
Put up-bloom, deadhead the spring flowers. After they fade, reduce off the stems simply above the foliage to encourage a repeat bloom in the summertime. Bear in mind to pinch off the primary two buds for the very best show.
When the second flush of flowers dies, scale back watering. Preserve the soil barely moist whereas the foliage additionally dies again. Discontinue fertilizing throughout the dormant interval.
After the foliage has withered, dormancy begins and lasts by the autumn and winter.
Place the pot in a location the place the temperature stays between 60 and 65°F and maintain the soil dry throughout dormancy.
In late winter to early spring, new development seems.
It is a good time to repot in recent soil earlier than bringing the pot into brilliant, oblique daylight for the rising season. Resume watering and fertilizing when the highest inch of soil is dry.
Repotting each one to 2 years replenishes the soil and provides you the chance to extend the pot measurement if mandatory.
Gloxinia likes a comfortable match, so enable not more than an inch of house between the tuber(s) and the rim and an inch between tubers.