Lynn's a true cactus fan and this video shows it!
If someone gave me a specimen like that I'd probably wet myself.
My lophs have recovered from some extensive crusting after a bit of careful feeding with straight urine. Maybe Lynn needs to pee on her 'yote, too - or get Hans to do it for her!That certainly is a massive and ancient lophophora. I have no idea how old though.
I had similar insect damage on my cacti and successfully treated it with Captain Jack's Deadbug Brew after sunset. If you decide to use the same product, be careful not to buy the Captain Jacks Insecticidal "Soap". I have read that the "soap" version damages cacti. It's very important to distinguish the two treatments and choose the proper one. The insects enjoy the soft tips of Trichocereus. That is where I noticed the damage.
I am not going to be proactive by pre-treating. I don't want to create treatment resistant bugs. I just keep an eye out for the first signs now so I catch them early.
Yeah, totally - and that's why I'm going for cautious application, interspersed with normal watering to flush the soil a bit. The natural equivalent would be occasional sprays of animal urine as a punctuation to whatever rain usually occurs.But then again it could also cause root burn and unwanted bacteria etc into the soil harming the plant.
I guess these specimens are planted directly into the ground for at least some of the year?I recently tested a record breaker from a mate that was feeding a bridgesii straight urine just about every second day. It snapped under its own weight mid summer but was in a decently shaded area. It did very well.
I also got my best pedro from him that also tested well and was feed copious amounts of urine.

Oh, and I definitely noticed enhanced pupping on a couple of specimens after urine treatment. They weren't labelled as f. caespitosa, but their relatively small size at pupping suggests to me there's some kind of spectrum of "caespitation" where some specimens pup more or less readily than average according to certain environmental triggers.I feel like straight urine needs more investigation inregards to mesc content and pupping. (I've read and heard this from many people) but I feel mine pup more when fed straight piss ever spring/ summer then ones that don't. I've also seem to have a trend with one's that get more heavily fertilised with urine usually contain bett3r mescaline content. Which could be for several reasons.
One side the urine likely gives a burst of nitrogen for pupping and the undiluted fertiliser/ salts might cause stress helping mescaline production. But then again it could also cause root burn and unwanted bacteria etc into the soil harming the plant.
Need to do some tests on clones