your tips for encouraging violas to keep flowering over the winter?

I just succumbed to a tray of viola "Ruby and Gold" marked down to 50p in Asda! Nice healthy-looking plants, and I love viola flowers with their little "faces", but a problem I've had in the past with these winter ones is that I buy them in bloom, plant them out, and lo and behold - once those first flowers go over, the plants stick around but remain just green and flowerless until the spring ... so, do any of you do better? Can you give me any tips? Should I be feeding them something? I do usually pinch out the dead heads, before they go to seed.

I'm planning to plant these ones in a pot on the patio, by the way. For a lovely spot of winter colour, visible from the kitchen!

 

I would do 2 things Clare

I would loosen the roots and cut off flowers and all flower buds. Also trim back the foliage.

I also think they are too small to plant out right now.....I would pot on into 9cm pots for now; they will produce new roots to make bigger plants. There will be enough nutrients in the new compost to perk them up. Water them well. A month or so should produce much bigger and better plants

 

Thank you very much, Verdun. I will do just that!

 

I do like Violas Clare, I bought a tray or two last spring for our caravan. They flowered very well all early summer. In late summer I noted a lot of growth in the limestone gravel under the planters.... they had self seeded in the hottest and driest summer for years !