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| Hi-
My husband and I are new in gardening, and we were gifted by this plant with beautiful violet flowers. I am not sure of the name and tried to look up more on it's watering and care. We've kept it in partial shade area. I have been watering it once a week, not over flooding, but enough to keep it moist. Since a couple of days, I noticed that the plant and its stems are falling flat, and clustering into one mass with leaves softening. The flowers have also fallen off. I know this is not an annual plant, but am concerned of it's health. Please help me to save our 1st plant, and if there are any resources for this plant which help with plant food - what frequency, watering needs and overall guidelines to better its growth. I highly appreciate your advice. Thanks so much
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Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by purpleinopp 8b AL (My Page) on Mon, Oct 29, 12 at 15:23
| Hi & welcome to Gardenweb. Those are pansies, a short-lived perennial that thrives in cooler weather. Although they aren't annuals, it's rare for them to stay alive for one whole year. No reason to give yourself a hard time if this doesn't live long. Watering on a schedule may be problematic. Plants don't always use water at the same rate. In the 2nd pic, they look too dry, but if that pot has a reservoir at the bottom that's been holding standing water, or if it doesn't have a drain hole, the roots could actually be staying too wet. As the older flowers die off, new ones should come out. If you keep the little seed heads trimmed off from the stems that held the old flowers, you'll get the most possible new flowers. As the days get shorter and the sun moves farther away, your plant might like more sun. |
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- Posted by nisha.revo none (My Page) on Thu, Nov 1, 12 at 3:26
| Thanks purpleinopp! Can u please explain a little about trimming off the little seed heads from the stems? Regards |
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- Posted by purpleinopp 8b AL (My Page) on Thu, Nov 1, 12 at 9:21
You're welcome. This is what the seed pods look like. When the petals fall off of the flowers, this is what is left.  If left alone, they will ripen and split, like this: Flowering plants have one goal - to make seeds. If you trim them off before they ripen, the plant will "feel" like it needs to make more flowers (to make more seeds.) You can do it with scissors or pinch it off with a fingernail. Removing forming seed pods from any plant is called dead-heading. On pansies, there's a long stem attached to the seed pods. I usually try to trim those off as much as possible just because I don't like the look of them sticking up from the plant if left long after removing the pod at the end. You may want to leave a pod to ripen occasionally so you can get the seeds to grow more plants. The plants that grow from these seeds may look different from your original plants. |
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| purple, you pics are fabulous. you use a macro obviously? and stage blue background;)?? how do you do that if you photograph outside? or do you photoshop? i know i should proly go into photo forum... that aside, aren't these johnny jump-ups? they actually flower longer then pansies, but still not last forever. for sure if you want them to continue blooming you need to remove all seed pods as soon as flowers wilt - which is like couple times a week at least. this pot just fizzed out: so densely planted, it proly needs continuous feed like african violets to stay in flower... but i love them better then pansies. |
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- Posted by purpleinopp 8b AL (My Page) on Tue, Nov 6, 12 at 15:18
| Oh, I'm sorry, I should have said those aren't my pics. I chose them from a random search because they were so good. Not that I can't take a pretty good pic with our camera, I don't have any of these to photograph at the moment. The last one I had must have come from a seed in the crack in the wall. It was so cute. |
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| it is very cute, they reseed like crazy. i love them popping in the grass. i am new to posting pics. so how can you plug in images from other sites? |
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- Posted by purpleinopp 8b AL (My Page) on Wed, Nov 7, 12 at 7:06
| Basic HTML codes work on these forums. The code for an image is like this (with the spaces next to < and > removed): < IMG SRC="http://www.url.com" > |
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