A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Question about av's and needing total darkness to bloom...

Hello,

I have an av that has had flowers on it for quite sometime now (weeks) and have not yey opened up. I read that av's need darkness at night to bloom and I live in a city that has street lights on during the night. The window they are in has a sheer curtain but it is not pitch black in the room at all. When they say dark... exactly how dark? If dark means pitch then what could I do to provide them with that? Also, if it is not opening up because of the "not dark enough" thing, then is it possible that it will never bloom at all (the ones that are alreay budded) because it took so long?

I used to belong to the AV club. They never did say anything about no light at night. I have about 12 violets and they bloom all the time. Sometime a virus will stop the plants from blooming. I will see if I can find something on that. Don't overwater it, that kills more violets than anything. I underwater mine I think, and they are 18 yr. old and still going.
Darlene

when i lived in my apartment, i had the av in the front window (it had the correct light) and there was a street light directly in front of the window. it bloomed all the time - in fact that was the first av i'd ever had that bloomed.

what kind of light does it get during the day? what direction is the window it's in facing?

It sits by a window the has a sheer curtain. The window a south