For a brief time I worked in an office with a bad case of African violets.
African violets are one of the few flowering plants that actually like living indoors, with a roof to stop the rain dampening their leaves, and no frosts or scorching summers. They also bloom best in an overcrowded pot, so rarely need repotting.
There are two African violets rules: water their soil, not the leaves or top of the plant, then let the pot sit in a saucer of water once a week. The pot should dry out before you water again.
The second rule is a well-lighted position, but not in a hot corner with scorching afternoon sunlight. They'll also need a room temperature of at least three degrees at night, and where the lights are turned off for at least 8 hours a day to promote blooming.
The next is a possibility, not a rule: feed with half-strength liquid fertiliser every few weeks for more leaves, and a bigger harvest of larger blooms. Your African violet will still grow, and bloom without feeding, but not spectacularly.
The wild progenitor of today's African violet was, as the name says, from Africa, though it isn't a violet - the small mauve flowers simply looked like violets. For a hundred years or so the original variety was enough to satisfy those who wanted a potted plant to put on their office desk or enliven Aunt Gladys' room while she recovered from her hip replacement.
Then breeders discovered the African violet's potential. You can now buy varieties with flowers in deep purple through to various reddish and mauve shades, to pure white. The blooms may be singles, semi double, double, or with an almost infinity of ruffled petals. You can choose round leaves, that are dull green and furry, or silvery, or bright green, deep green; or with creamy white leaf edges and round or oval shapes. A well grown African violet is truly spectacular.
They also ridiculously easy to propagate, just from a leaf of someone else's plant. The magic of "borrow a leaf, bung it in a pot and wait for your plant to emerge" was what had infected the office. Someone had presumably admired the plant on a colleague's desk.
"Let me give you one of your own," the owner may have replied, carefully breaking off a lower outside leaf. "Just bury the stem gently in a pot, water, and wait a month or so."
Garden guides recommend dipping the stem into a hormone growing mix before planting. I don't know anyone who has bothered. Just like mint and pelargoniums, the cuttings simply grow.
You do need the right growing mix though, a peaty or compost-like soil - African violets grown in garden soil rarely thrive. It's worth buying a bag of African violet potting mix if you plan to have your own African violet jungle - and once you have grown one, you'll probably want more.
By the time I joined the office, the infection was in the ''severe" stage. Every single desk had at least one African violet. Filing cabinets had a line of three or four pots, and a small table had been moved to fit in even more pots. Office colleagues searched garden centres to find the most exotic and spectacular varieties.
Two large paint brushes rested on the table, pinched from the design department, to dust the furry leaves - African violets can get dusty, which clogs up their pores. The office even had its own teapot - the spout makes watering without touching the leaves easier. Stubborn plants that refused to bloom were covered in a paper bag for three or four days, a torture that almost invariably led to a sudden abundance of flowers.
I fell victim too, of course, but I didn't take my pots with me, as my prospective home was a shed, in a garden that had already grown to about a hectare of veg, fruit and flowers.
Now, decades later, I suddenly have an African violet again, a gift from a visitor, flowering beautifully, and tempting me every day to pick a leaf or three to grow new plants to give to others.
This is a warning: once you've been in love with African violets, the magic of growing so many from one small pot stays with you all your life.
This week I am:
- Installing a fox trap to capture the frog- and small bird-eating fox who's made his lair under the salvia bushes just outside my window.
- Wondering what the record is for the amount of garden covered by a single choko vine.
- Baking autumn veg like pumpkin, carrot and young choko with olive oil and a scattering of Madras spice.
- Watching the oranges, cumquats and limes turn colour for winter harvests.
- Leaving the bunch of bananas on the bush as long as possible, but hoping the fruit bats don't guzzle them in a night.
- Trimming back the kiwifruit tangles, waiting for the fruit to ripen.
- Trying to remove weeds before their seeds ripen, though so many weed seeds blew hundreds of kilometres in the fires that the entire region now has a goodly weed seed burden in the soil.
