BrownDog

Golden hours Lumberjackiousness

Cooper's has a new bottle since I last had it. :-)

My successes from my first attempt ... 4 of 6 took: (SS01 x SS02) x VRG Zelly 7 x Zelly 5 Zelly 7 x Zelly 5 LW I can see now that this might become a problem....

... and here's it operating as designed and intended:

Moved all the rooting plants out into the sun for the afternoon then back to the porch before the cold rain and maybe snow tonight. ... and neglected to photograph them. Here's my new, callousing Jiimz bridges as consolation and non-sequiturness:

During Friday's pilgrimage to a favorite out-of-town succulent nursery, I finally got to meet one of the main gardeners / mangers who was willing to sell me a couple of offsets and a log from a rather giant peruvianus? cuzconesis? I've coveted for the last few years. I'm not usually there on a weekday and said person who can decide to sell these particular specimens does not work weekend so I have had to bide my time. A big wind had broken some columns on the big mothers and he was logging some elsewhere on the site and many a colorful pup was on display. After chatting some he agreed to sell me an offset and a large, rooted log which I shall plant and grow out happily. I quite dig the spines and their colors plus #2 has some great blue going on and they are kind of unusual in my admittedly limited experience. What do y'all think of these? The mother plants look like: and the log looks like: and a pup closeup: and this is a pup from a different plant that may or may not be from the same original mother: Bonus gratuitous myrto porn if you're still with me:

Thanks. It's still pretty warm during the days though rain is finally neigh: the end of another long, dry CA Summer and I appear to be "done enough" in time. I scored 4 nice, new, double panned windows (cheap) from second hand building supply place here and they defined the structure. I'll hack some more sealing of the gaps but it doesn't get *that* cold for *that* long here - at least not most years I expect I'll need something to accommodate taller columns next Winter :-)

Got the Winter cold greenhouse setup well enough to start moving plants in. I still need some shelves for the shorter plants so I can pack them all in for the soon-to-be cold and rainy season. and more of their friends and family that I have yet to move: and I won't get into the too-numerous seedlings from @zelly and @Evil Genius their online crack^h^h^h^h^h seed stores.

About a year ago, I started the addictive process of growing cacti from seed. For my first test, learning batch, I sowed a bunch of Zelly's red and yellow T. grandis in a take away tub. They sprouted nicely, grew up and in the Spring (N. California), I transplanted them into 2" pots to fill out and harden off. They grew well and are now healthy, happy little plants but the lower stems are quite slim and red colored compared with the tops: I've already accidentally broken one off and am trying to root it again in a new pots. I also have more varieties going now, some with similar growth patterns.I am interested in what more experienced growers do with plants like this. I could transplant them into bigger pots and have the final soil layer end up where they get wider and greener. This seems like a possible invitation for rot to take up residence, but I've read of folks planting an entire grafted Trich, Pereskiopsis and all so maybe that's an unfounded worry. I could cut them off, dry them and root them but that would presumably set the growth back quite a bit. What would y'all do with little ones like this? Thanks!

Heh - I looked around at them all over the weekend and wondered "what have I done?" At least they are hardy plants and can survive a couple of weeks without water, unlike tomatoes etc which I gave up so I can vacation with impunity.

Thanks for that. I appreciate seeing the whole process and time line laid out like that. You do lovely work.

I re-potted it in the Spring and it pushed out five pups. :-)

Lumberjack from Cactus Affinity: and a new one (Peruvianus?) from a nursery:

Thanks. A bunch of them in the back are various Zelly crosses I'm growing, many of which are looking pretty good right now. Lots more transplanted and stalled little ones lying in window sills too. Addictive little hobby this. I'm still figuring out the right rhythm the sowing, growing and transplanting to keep them growing without stalling. I tried a big flat of see starting cells and that worked OK for germinating and early growth, but was a bit unwieldy and it took a lot of time to carefully transplant all the little ones. I think I left them in the inert soil mix too long too. For my latest round of @Evil Genius seeds, I used small pots, 2in / 5cm ish, with sifted cactus soil mix, pumice and some coir, sprinkling 10-15 seeds over the top then fitting 8 of them in a clear plastic take away tub in a window sill. I intend to leave them undisturbed as long as they continue to grow and look healthy. This is my favorite approach so far.

Thusfar, all the deep transplants survived and thrived. None have yet succumbed to anything wet and weird. I hope to get another month or two of growth out of them in the warm Fall and unheated greenhouse - more of a greenroom really. Here's a photo update:

Thanks for the input. I leaned toward just planting them deeper - it just seemed the right thing to do - and I'm happy get more expert confirmation.

Here's a few more from my most recent visit

I've visited this place a couple of times and really enjoy it. Heavy on the Pinterest succulent lovers appeal however there's lot of cool larger cacti to checkout as well. I should have taken more photos of the vast small succulent production operation. I asked about cuttings but the person who could answer wasn't there that day. Next time hopefully.

I'm new to growing trichs and one of my plants has small spots of what looks like rust on this tip. The spots are still fairly small and I have isolated that plant from the rest for now. It's about to get cold and rainy again and I plan to overwinter them all outside in a small, unheated green house like structure I built, so I'd like to know so I can either trim that infected part off or put it elsewhere for the Winter. Thanks for any opinions.

Hi All - This is a first post and these are my first try at growing cactus from seed with some Zelly / misplant seeds. The big zone is Red Grandiflorus x Yellow Grandiflorus and the other two are SS02xSS01 x Huarazensis and SS02xSS01 x Peru Clyde. I sowed them 2016-08-07 and have mostly let them be aside from occasional misting with distilled water. Almost all of the ones I sowed germinated and I'm going to do another round soon with more of his seed as well as some I got from spooge in his give-away here. Thanks again! I used the basic instructions off the misplant.net site. A layer of commercial cactus mix, wetted and sterilized in the microwave, then a layer of rinsed sand, also sterilized. I culled a few albinos seeing as to how I'm not setup for grafting just yet, though I hope to get around to it eventually. It's fun and exciting to see the little buggers growing so nicely and easily.

Well then, I'll claim one and say Hi as a new member with a budding cactus habit #5 ? I hope