Good Grooming By Suzanne Ress 

There is a relationship between personal grooming and how to take care of an African violet.

	ME	My African Violet
Regularly	Shower, brush hair, deodorant, vitamins	Water and fertilize, turn, remove spent leaves, check for bugs
Scheduled	Hair cut, teeth cleaning, physical exam, exercise	Repot, disbud
Special Event	Shower, shave, new hair cut, manicure, new outfit	Repot, groom for symmetry, bloom boost, monitor light

As you go through your day, week, or season, you follow certain personal patterns:

·       Your daily maintenance to keep clean and socially acceptable; for your African violet you would water and fertilize, if necessary, check for bugs and powdery mildew, remove spent leaves, and rotate the plant so that the leaves grow symmetrically and don’t start leaning towards your light source.·        

·       On a regular basis you take responsibility for maintaining your health with dental and physical exams, exercise (yeah, right…), and haircuts; for your African violets, regular repotting keeps them healthy and maintains a continuous growing pattern. If you’ve been removing spent leaves, then a neck needs to be scraped and potted down; or for trailers or standard sized plants, you may need to go up a pot size. If you plan to enter this plant in a show, then you might want to disbud to let your plant’s growing energy focus on foliage. Check your lights to see if they’re getting spent or if you grow under natural light, check that the plants are not too close, too far, or getting sunburned.·        

·       For that special event, you go all out, new outfit, special care in your grooming and makeup, maybe even a new hair style, a facial, pedicure, and manicure (yum!) Well African violets need special attention if they’re going to be shown. A lot of the work is done in the three months before the show (see “Grow To Show”), but for the show itself, you want to provide a clean pot, clean leaves, symmetrical growth, and lots of blooms.

It’s the Special Event, i.e., show, preparation that needs a little more time and attention.

• For example, you should wash the leaves. When the plant has buds, not open blossoms, remove accumulated dust and cat hair by gently rinsing the leaves. What I do is run a very gentle stream of lukewarm water from my kitchen tap, put a glob of dishwashing soap by the side of the sink, and tear up a few paper towels into strips or chunks (don’t obsess). Then I take my plant, hold it at an angle so the water doesn’t run towards the stem, wet a leaf, put a dab of soap on my thumb, gently rub the leaf, and then rinse it off. I do this to all the bigger leaves and don’t worry about the newer, smaller, center leaves. I then dry each leaf off by using the torn edge of the paper towel to suck up the water drops, and then pat the leaf dry, top and underside. As long as I don’t drop the plant, this method works wonders. I always find that the plants really do look healthier and seem to grow better after a bath.
•  
• Repotting seems like a no-brainer. Every time you repot, you are giving the plant new, unspent, un-degraded growing medium, which allows it to take up nutrients more efficiently.
•  
• Speaking of nutrients, while you should feed your plants with diluted fertilizer when you do your regular watering, for a show plant, you want to boost the flower power (number of blooms is ¼ of the plant’s score in an AVSA show), so use a bloom-booster fertilizer starting about 3 months before the show. If you want to get sort of scientific about bloom boosting, then monitor each plant’s bloom cycle, how long from disbudding to bud formation, how long from bud appearance to open bloom, and how long does a bloom last. With this type of information, you can really tailor your fertilizing schedule to, hopefully, get optimum bloom at show time; otherwise, just go with the average, which seems to be about 3 months from disbudding to blooming.
•  
• The day before or day of the show, take a good look at your plant under strong light If your vision isn’t the greatest, call in some knowledgeable help from someone (a club member, perhaps.) This is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure that your plant gets the ribbon it (and you) really deserve. Judges deduct for lack of symmetry in growth and bloom, dirty leaves, spent leaves, spent buds and flowers, suckers, and marred leaves, not to mention plants that are under potted (pot too small for the size of the plant), over potted (pot too big for the size of the plant), plant not centered in the pot, and plant too big for it’s size category (semi-minis no greater than 8” across, and minis no greater than 6” across – embroidery hoops are your friends and great tools to use to monitor for correct sizing.) Remove everything that shouldn’t be there Repot, if necessary, and slip-pot with a same size pot if your pot isn’t pristine. This is a good way to keep the label with the plant’s name on it intact, too.
  

Pack up your beauties so that they don’t touch, won’t slide around, and have support for their leaves. Make sure they are covered to protect them from air-borne and wind-borne stuff, and put them on the floor of your car or in the trunk (why do you think they shouldn’t go on the seat?) Bring some grooming tools with you because if Classification sees something that shouldn’t be there, you will have to fix it. Any sign of any sort of bug or heavy powdery mildew will disqualify your plant, which is another reason to take a good look at it before it hits the show hall.

So, go take a nice, calming bath, extend your love to your plants, and go for it!