Thank you for the comparison....that is very interesting. That's weird as I ordered from Rob's and there was hardly any loose dirt. I will agree tho...the ones from Lyons are much bigger!

I was at an AV show in Mansfield, Ohio today, and both vendors were there. FWIW, both had gorgeous plants, and were very nice. I'm an old hand with episcias, but not so much with AV's and some of the more exotic gesneriads, and both places were very friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful.

Even if the Violet Barn doesn't carry Rob's Ragamuffin any longer :)

Celene

Oh, I heard about that show from Rob's website. Aw man, I wish I could have gone. :-( I'm so envious.

yeah Barb, seems my experience is unusual. And because so much wet soil was pressed against the crown of one of the african violets, a couple leaves deep in the crown were soft and black. I had to pluck them out, which I'm afraid will make the plant sucker. i mean, i have a feeling that if i had had this experience with another vendor, i wouldn't order from them again, but i'm willing to mostly because everybody just keeps raving about them and how they are so wonderful. probably my next order from them will be better?

Maybe their chief packer was out. lol.

The damage in the crown is a bit worrisome. Beware of crown rot! If it looks iffy, you might want to contact them. I've never had crown rot on an AV, but on orchids we dribble hydrogen peroxide into the crown. Let sit for a minute, then dab dry.

Nikki, as long as the growing tip of the crown is not damaged the plant shouldn't sucker. If it does, then propagate the suckers to get a nice plant, or cut out all but one and let it become the new crown. It can be hard to remove crowns when they are tiny. Some people use exacto knives for this. Meanwhile, you can also put down some leaves to propagate a new backup plant.

I am happy to see your enthusiasm for gesneriads! They are so much fun to delve into, head first;and, you will never run out of new material! But, you might just run out of window space. Hence my continual recommendation for a light stand.

Maybe you might be interested in the AGGS convention coming up next July (second week) in Portland Oregon. We always have a great plant sale at the convention. Plus, the convention is just a lot of fun for everyone. I am planning to drive up with a car load of plants for the show and sale. The sale plants will all be donations to the sale, which benefits AGGS as well as the growers. In my case the grower's share goes to my local chapter. The convention will be at a hotel in the downtown area, near famous Powell's Book Store, which I keep hearing about. It runs from Wednesday thru Saturday evening. The sale opens up dramatically at about 9:30 PM on Thursday evening and the show opens on Friday afternoon. I never have a minute to waste the entire week. Roomates shouldn't be difficult to find either (Maybe Jen?????????). Keep it in mind, anyway.

Jon, your friendly neighborhood gesneriad addict.

Jon, yeah, I'm all over the gessies now. My situation restricts what i can grow, so I'm all about the aroids and the gessies. But really, gessies are more fun and I can have more variety because most of them are smaller than the aroids I have. Aroids for the foliage, gessies mostly for the flowers (though I also got the greatest petrocosmea from Rob's, too, which is great foliage).

Well you know Jon, I do have a light stand. I've had it since at least February. Just not much was growing on it. It's 4 shelves, and this means three tiers to hang lights from. I've had lights on one shelf since February, but like I said, I didn't put much there. Now it's all filled up and a 2nd shelf that I just added lights to is also 1/2 full. I still half the third shelf w/o lights and a couple of low light plants there. But almost every plant there is, you guessed it, gessies! My aroids are too large to go there anyway, and they can take the natural sun from my south-facing. But I burned one of my streps with that sun, so it had to go under lights. I'll probably put my little citrus plant there too, once the sun disappears from my apt. for the year.

You know I've joined a local AGGS chapter and the national group, right? Man, I've got it bad. I'd love to go to the convention, might have tried to go this year but I was out of the country. But I'm looking forward to next year's. Maybe we'll meet there! I have big dreams of one day helping in the hybridizing process, because some genera don't have much variety. I mean, look at Petrocosmea! Hardly any variegation or scent in streps, which have potential for both. I think I'm going to try crossing the scented strep I just got with whatever's open at the time.

Well, enough rambling from me.

I contacted Rob's and they sent an email apologizing for the damage on one of the AVs (the crown damage) and will credit my card for that amount. Just wanted to let everyone know that they fixed the problem.

Hi Nikki, I think working on petrocosmea is a great idea. It is not the easiest one to work with so you may want to work on some easier group to start with. Pets generally bloom in their season, which for most species seems to be fall. P. formosa always seems to flower in June/July making it a good little plant to bring and enter in the AGGS convention show. The only Pet. hybrid is 'Momo', a cross of flaccida and (I forget...). Anyway, one of the obsticles is that not all petrocosema are close enough to cross, but most of the attempts at crossing were made when we had very few species in cultivation and the first three were not close enough to cross. Secondly this genus has an odd way of holding its pollen. You need to go into the flower with a tool like a pin and kind of (hard to describe) spring open the anther, whereupon the pollen sort of shoots out. I am looking forward to your first attempts at harvesting pollen. Let us know.

But if ever you want ideas of hybridizing ideas I am full of them! It is just a natural part of gesneriad growing to think creatively of all the myriad possibilities. I hope to bring to the convention some of my large flowered nematanthus hybrids, which have big leaves and big flowers on long pedicels.

Jon

Thanks for the recommendation, mwedzi. I hadn't ordered from Lyndon Lyons before, so after reading your posting I just had to get in an order before they stopped shipping for the winter. Just got the order, and the plants are beautiful. Several really gorgeous Kohlerias and Episcias plus two Streps with beautiful blooms.

They didn't have everything I wanted because it's late in the season for them to sell. Was able to work out satisfactory substitutions on the phone--I never let the grower do that for me.

Looking forward to ordering from them again.

I much prefer their potting mix. Rob's seems too heavy and soggy for me.

Thank you too, Jon, for recommending some of the more compact Kohlerias on another posting.