Grow your own cactii!

[SHroomtroll]

I got 3 50cm pedros 2weeks ago, also 3 peyote clusters

Hopefully they will all survive and give me many wonderful experiences.

Ive only done cacti once and it was dried pedro, very loving and healing experience.

 

[The Day Tripper]

I Recently purchased some baby bridgesii off ebay, and am trying my green thumb at cultivating them. Have them in a 1/3 perlile, 2/3 organic cactus mix. They seem pretty happy and healthy indoors facing the sun through a bay window. I water them approx every 2-3 days and they seem to dry out between waterings. Also use a low dose cactus fert. for every feeding. Some of them have roots going to the bottom of their yoghurt cups 1 month after planting. Got them with minimal root mass, wrapped in newspaper, all approx 3" tall.

My question is do these cacti look healthy, and does watering them that often seem like a good idea?

I'm not too sure how dry you are supposed to let babies get between waterings, and would love and appreciative any feedback or advice as to keeping these little devils happy and growing as fast as possible.

Thanks in advance, and here's some pics i just took of them-

 

[dg]

probably ok with your light soil mix, if it had more organic matter you'd be watering them to death

when they get established they can dry out soil like that very quickly

 

[Madcap]

I'm pretty new (2 years) to growing. You will likely adjust your soil mix depending on how stuff works.

I doubt I've got it dialed in yet. A root rot this summer really put me and my friends on alert paranoid mode... I don't doubt that my soil mix is too light but it rains allot here followed right behind by 98 degree days.

Living in Florida, I use 50/50 perilte / soil for the cacti in the yard w no cover from rain. I believe the first few cacti I potted in much too large of plastic container. 1 plant happened to get far less perilite than others and was the only one I've had to cut and rescue from root rot. Heavy rains followed by super hot days literally can cook the roots right in the pot if its wet enough/ hot enough. The plant is a lump of goo with spines within a day.

The collection of cuttings I acquired this year are all in teracotta pots with 50/50 perilte/organic potting soil. I mixed in some of the water gel crystal that absorb excess water and release it as it drys. My thoughts here are that the expansion and contraction will keep the soil mix loose. I put a nice layer of pebbles on top to minimize evaporation (enough happens with the teracotta) and to stop water from burrowing in the soil when I'm watering them.

I don't intend to stay with teracotta once it's time to up-pot. I've been looking into air-pruning containers to really get a great root system going ... No one seems to be talking about these pots with cacti. I will hopefully spread the word once I give them a try.

 

[SHroomtroll]

I use 50/50 soil perlite, also i only watered my pedros 2times since i got them to stress the roots abit, ive heard it´s good so they will spread more searching for water.

Will probably start to water them more in a week or so.

 

[lessless]

Hi! At last I got a chance for growing my own San-Pedro and to be honest I'm little bit over-worried about doing everything right
The Universe has blessed me with two cuttings and all i found in my town are:
*two ceramic pots
*two bags of soil for cacti
*drainage and vermiculite that left from mushrooms

But i red that proper soil is 1:1:1 parts of sand, crushed brick and soil. What should I do?
Also there is a perlite avaible in the shops. May i use it instead of crushed brick?

 

[dg]

1 part "soil" and 1 part perlite
should be good for those small cuttings, it will take quite a while for them to achieve real girth
be very scarce with the water until they throw roots

 

[Orion]

Bumping this thread since its just a general place to dump cacti pics. Update of the pach babies. Tall one is about 4 inch. Ain't they just juicy lookin!

 

[nicechrisman]

Here in NW washington, it's not quite so easy to produce one's own as we have very limited sunlight here. But we get great mushrooms, so there is that...

I do have a collection I'm growing, but I don't get much growth each year. Eventually I may become self sustaining, but I think it will still be several years. They grow a lot skinnier here too. Even in full sun.

 

[jamie]

mine grow okay here in vancouver and not too skinny. My torch nearly doubled between may-october this year outside. Are you giving them extra light indoors in winter? That is what makes them skinny in my expereince. I just bring them in for the winter and leave the in a shady spot under my palm trees and dont water till spring.

 

[pau]

Hey lessless: is that Cactus in Kiev? Sounds like a movie title.

You do have the 3 basic ingredients for good cactus mix: sand, soil, crushed gravel/brick. As has been stated here, everything else is fine-tuning. A little vermiculite won't hurt, and could help with water retention. But the extra things I like to add are a small amount of agricultural lime (it fertilizes and naturally acidifies the soil) and worm castings (probably mucho Hyrvnias where you live) or seasoned cattle manure. I know a professional cactus grower who uses 50% manure in his mixture and he gets incredible results here in southern California. It's easy, even my dog grows cactus - here's Juul himself checking out his formulas.

 

[nicechrisman]

mine grow okay here in vancouver and not too skinny. My torch nearly doubled between may-october this year outside. Are you giving them extra light indoors in winter? That is what makes them skinny in my expereince. I just bring them in for the winter and leave the in a shady spot under my palm trees and dont water till spring.

The only good spot in my yard where they aren't likely to be stolen is on my deck that faces SE. Get OK light, but not the best. Direct morning sun and some direct afternoon. I wish I had a better spot for them that I felt safe about.

I pretty much let mine go full dormant in winter too. no water, very little light.

 

[jamie]

yeah I had mine is a spot this year that was getting sun nearly all day long..they never did much the previour years with like half that sun only.

 

[nicechrisman]

Used to have a better spot where I used to live. I tried moving one of mine to the sunnier side of the house, but it was immediately stolen, so I don't think I'll be trying that again soon. Might see if I can have them at my parents' house next summer cuz they have a large west facing back yard. Kinda a pain to transport them all though, and I like having them around to be around them.

 

[Aegle]

My babies...

Much Peace and Respect

 

[dg]

Here in NW washington, it's not quite so easy to produce one's own as we have very limited sunlight here. But we get great mushrooms, so there is that...

I do have a collection I'm growing, but I don't get much growth each year. Eventually I may become self sustaining, but I think it will still be several years. They grow a lot skinnier here too. Even in full sun.

my friend in the san juan islands grows huge cacti (in his greenhouse )
they get fatter in his climate than mine in N.CA

 

[The Day Tripper]

Here in NW washington, it's not quite so easy to produce one's own as we have very limited sunlight here. But we get great mushrooms, so there is that...

I do have a collection I'm growing, but I don't get much growth each year. Eventually I may become self sustaining, but I think it will still be several years. They grow a lot skinnier here too. Even in full sun.

Are you on the coast or up in the hills/mountains?

In eastern norcal (top western flank of the sierra's, not high desert) mine do pretty well during the summer, they put on a good 8-10" ea this season, though, like yours they are a bit thin. The cacti im talking about are the cacti i posted earlier in this thread. I live pretty high up though, almost 5k feet and we don't get alot of precipitaiton in the summer.

I had them in a mini greenhouse last summer, and was really surprized at how big they got, some are almost 1 1/2' tall. A bit lanky, but 3 also pupped like crazy. One of my montroses managed 8 pups this summer, and two of the columar bridgesii's currently have ~6-7 slightly bigger than a quarter in girth, and ~1-2" tall. It was crazy watching that many pups show up in a matter of two weeks or less.

All in all it was a good summer, my 6 original bridgesii's put on ~8" each, i got 3 large top cuttings rooted after planting them in late july (it starts to freeze around here in late october, when i bring them inside, i cut it pretty close) at least 10 new pups on my 2 montroses, another 10 or so bridgesii pups, actually got a 2" penis plant cutting the girth of a dime to root, and another 6 small bridgesii cactuses that doubled in size over the summer they're about 8" tall now. . They are doing pretty good in a windowstill, watering ~1 a month or two now, after weaning down.

Mabey its the high altitude or something, they did suprizingly well for an area that gets snowcover ~4 months of the year.

 

[nicechrisman]

Here in NW washington, it's not quite so easy to produce one's own as we have very limited sunlight here. But we get great mushrooms, so there is that...

I do have a collection I'm growing, but I don't get much growth each year. Eventually I may become self sustaining, but I think it will still be several years. They grow a lot skinnier here too. Even in full sun.

my friend in the san juan islands grows huge cacti (in his greenhouse )
they get fatter in his climate than mine in N.CA

yeah, mine do OK, but not like my friends in the Southwest I guess is what I as getting at. I've got cuttings from friends in the SE that are probably 3-4 times the girth that mine will ever be.

We do have a strangely short growing season here in Bellingham though compared to most of the rest of the PNW. Much shorter than Vancouver and Seattle. Kinda a horticultural anomaly.

Daytripper- I live on the coast (well the sound)

 

[dg]

yeah, mine do OK, but not like my friends in the Southwest I guess is what I as getting at. I've got cuttings from friends in the SE that are probably 3-4 times the girth that mine will ever be.

We do have a strangely short growing season here in Bellingham though compared to most of the rest of the PNW. Much shorter than Vancouver and Seattle. Kinda a horticultural anomaly.

Daytripper- I live on the coast (well the sound)

I got one of my favorite clones from a friend in Bellingham

on the same trip i visited my friend on Lopez it was 15-20* and his greenhouse had just collapsed under snow and trees- he gave me broken bits of cacti 8-10" in girth- which only get 5-6" down here in sunny hot CA (of course his plants were older)

 

[nicechrisman]

yeah, mine do OK, but not like my friends in the Southwest I guess is what I as getting at. I've got cuttings from friends in the SE that are probably 3-4 times the girth that mine will ever be.

We do have a strangely short growing season here in Bellingham though compared to most of the rest of the PNW. Much shorter than Vancouver and Seattle. Kinda a horticultural anomaly.

Daytripper- I live on the coast (well the sound)

I got one of my favorite clones from a friend in Bellingham

on the same trip i visited my friend on Lopez it was 15-20* and his greenhouse had just collapsed under snow and trees- he gave me broken bits of cacti 8-10" in girth- which only get 5-6" down here in sunny hot CA (of course his plants were older)

must be more just an issue with my spot then. I wish I had a spot with better sun where people wouldn't steal them. I definitely could get away with partial sun much more easily when I lived in the Portland area though.