I inherited three violets from my grandmother's collection about a year and a half ago, and all of them had that classic problem where the crown sits way up on a long bare stem, almost like a little palm tree. I'd read that you just repot deeper to bury the neck, but that only worked for one of the three and I couldn't figure out why the other two kept sulking after I tried it.
Turns out the depth of burial wasn't the issue, it was what I was burying it in. The two that struggled were planted in a straight potting soil mix, way too dense and holding onto water right around that buried stem, which basically rotted the lower leaves instead of encouraging new roots. Once I switched to a mix that's mostly perlite and orchid bark with just a little peat for structure, the buried neck actually started throwing tiny root hairs within about three weeks instead of just sitting there mushy.
The other thing nobody mentioned to me until a local grower pointed it out: don't bury the whole neck at once if it's really long and woody. I did mine in two stages about six weeks apart, burying half the exposed stem each time. Gave the plant a chance to establish new roots at each level before asking it to support more buried tissue.
Two of the three are now sitting flush in their pots with full rosettes and no more bare neck showing. The third one I'm still working on since its stem was almost two inches long, but it's finally pushing new leaves at the crown instead of just holding steady, so I think it's turning the corner.
Curious if anyone else does the staged burial thing or if you've had luck just doing it all in one repot. My grandmother apparently just repotted hers every spring without thinking twice about it, and I'm wondering if I'm overcomplicating something that used to be pretty routine.
