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How many cactus to be self sufficient?

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UrbanS

Rising Star
Hello,
Im starting up my little forest of Trichocereus Bridgesii cacti to be self sufficient in the mescalito area. My question is how many I will need to have.
I want to be able to harvest about 10-20 medium trips worth (for me and my friends) each year. They will need to be dormant for 6 months every year since I live in a nordic cold country, In the summer they will be out in the sun.

How many cactus do you think I will need to achieve that?

Ps. This is a long term project, I don't expect to start harvesting until after a few years.

Kind regards
Urban
 
I would say that a bridge, in this kind of conditions, can produce 1 dose a year but wait for more advice from other nexians as i'm lucky enough to be able to grow them all year long.

Grafting can increase the rate of growing.
 
Rough numbers based on what I get:

This last year I was getting ~800 mgs full spectrum alkaloids/kg fresh material, but a substantial portion of that would be other alks besides mescaline. So I'd estimate 500 mgs mescaline/kg fresh cactus. Most of what I extracted was proven Bridgesii, some I grew and some I didn't. I have about 70 pots, with about half being Bridgesii and only some of them ready to be harvested in any given season. I've harvested a total of ~3 kgs per Season the last two years from all cacti. As they get bigger and I continue to improve their conditions this number grows (slowly, like the cacti).

100 cacti pots, each producing 200 grams fresh cactus/year would yield 20 kg/year fresh cactus. If you get 500 mg mescaline/kg from an extraction that would yield 10 grams mescaline/year (about 20 solid doses).

Again, very much approximate numbers.
 
If you want to try to approach that yield my advice would be to grow as many as you will have space for in winter once they are in 20-30 cm pots and 1-2 metres tall.
If you somehow surpass your target yield you could always kill off or give away the poorest performers.
I have an entire bedroom that is filled with cacti in the winter.
 
Elrik mine filled up the back room in winter and wife banished them the next year so I went with a greenhouse tent for overwintering. It's proven to be an effective solution. I have an oil type space heater in it.
 

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Wolfnippletip said:
Elrik mine filled up the back room in winter and wife banished them the next year so I went with a greenhouse tent for overwintering. It's proven to be an effective solution. I have an oil type space heater in it.
Click to expand...

This is really cool!😁
 
@wolfnipple, I would move in there if I had one of those. Peace, and, quiet.8)

It would be my thinkin’ spot.
 
Nice setup Wolf!

OP figure that you will need approximately 1 foot of bridgesii per medium trip.

If you want up to 20 doses per year then it would be good to start with at least 20 plants. As time passes and they get bigger you will probably be able to go down to fewer plants. But to start with you basically want as many plants as you have room for.

Cacti are a long term endeavor. Start now and a few years down the road is when you will really start to reap the rewards.
 
Wolfnippletip said:
Elrik mine filled up the back room in winter and wife banished them the next year so I went with a greenhouse tent for overwintering. It's proven to be an effective solution. I have an oil type space heater in it.
Click to expand...
A fan heater might be more efficient as it distributes the heat evenly. And you could set it on a thermostat to keep the temps just above your plants' cold limit. With a fan heater if you wanted to keep them just above freezing you could set the thermostat to, say, 1C, and you would know all your plants are above freezing and not just the ones near the heater.

These cacti can take quite a lot of frost when kept dry, like -12C. Exposed to the elements of a rainy winter, slug damage can sometimes be a bigger factor than cold damage.
 
Thanks guys for the detailed answers, very helpful. I think my space limit is about 40-50 pots, so I'll settle for that.

Very interesting with your solution for dormancy. Having them inside seems to be to warm (20 celcius) for them to go dormant.
Wolfnipletip, your litle cacti tipi - looks like it can be expensive with the heating cost? Is it insulated? How cold winters do you have?
I believe i will need to find a similar solution.
 
The greenhouse tent adds about $15/month to my heating costs, but my energy costs are relatively low so YMMV. I'm in Zone 7a, and I put the cacti in the tent from about early/mid December and usually can have them back outside by the first of March, so basically December, January and February in the tent. I adjust the Space Heater to between 40F and 50F. I have about a dozen cases of bottled water in the tent for a thermal mass. On the outside of the tent I pile leaves for insulation. I run a 10 gauge Extension cord to the oil type space heater, which I chose because it has no exposed heating element.

You can find the tent (Get the larger one, trust me) on Amazon or Ebay for about 100 USD, the Space Heater for about 65 USD and the extension cord for about 30 USD. The tent is very sturdy, but you definitely want to make sure it is well secured to the ground.

Tent: https://www.abbapatio.com/products/...MI2qGawIDs4gIVj4bACh0yTQ0TEAkYByABEgKO3fD_BwE
 
Wolfnippletip, your photo of the cactus inside the tent with the heater reminds me of some entheogenic mirror image of wise elders gathered together around a sacred fire in a tipi.
 
Mitakuye Oyasin said:
Wolfnippletip, your photo of the cactus inside the tent with the heater reminds me of some entheogenic mirror image of wise elders gathered together around a sacred fire in a tipi.
Click to expand...

I really dig this correlation as well.

Plants just wanna hang with the boys like we do.

😁
 
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