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nitrogen

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Posts posted by nitrogen

  6. Posted

    Thx for the kind words! I've been fortunate in a number of ways in terms of cactus growing, and enjoy spreading the goodness - brings me a lot of joy to stoke other people out..

    Hopefully everyone's get there, but as Ethos says, there is now a bunch of these seeds in Oz and NZ - assuming good germination rates like I'm seeing, there will probably be seeds and seedlings in circulation here in a bit for those who didn't get the seed from me..

    • Like 2

  7. Posted · Edited by nitrogen

    From what you describe I'm afraid it sounds like the pollination was not successful - basically, the flower would stay on the plant and develop into a fruit, which is the seed pod (often sweet and tasty as the plants way of enticing animals to eat it and spread the seed around when they defecate)..

    With trichocereus anyway it's always a very sad sight to come out and find the flower laying on the ground after pollination was attempted..

  8. Posted · Edited by nitrogen

    Hope they all touch down soon - pity it's taking some of them awhile to arrive.

    I imagine they will get there though - all addresses were double checked and printed legibly, and everything was tight and proper in terms of the packaging and customs form - they would have no reason to confiscate the letters - the return addy is real and no letters have come back to me - all were paid at the register too, so there were no issues with correct postage etc.. And everyone who emailed me with their addy got a letter sent out.

    I've seen this before with letters to Oz though - sometimes they take a bit - no rhyme or reason to it

  9. Posted

    I've heard mixed things about how long to leave them in high humidity.. A comrade of mine says he just keeps pereskiopsis grafts in humidity for 24 hours.. I've been doing 2-4 days - seems to work pretty well - about 80% of them take.. I depends on how humid the climate is though - I reckon some places don't need it for as long..

  10. Posted

    Yea those look healthy - if they are sown at the right time though a year under natural conditions can produce good size like that - few inches tall or so within a year.. Ferts make a big difference too..

    Hybrids with SS02 and other bridgesii in them seem to grow faster than pachanoi/peruvianus seedlings too, IME.. The SS02 x SS01 is a bridgessi x peruvianus and those are quite vigorous indeed - as long as the bridgesii is in there they seem to do really well..

  11. Posted

    Grafted some more seedlings to pereskiopsis - lost a whole batch last week and not sure why - I think I left them in the humidity too long - they got all squishy and shriveled up.

    I thought I had the bomb uber-humidity tech going by doing all the grafting in the bathroom with the shower turned on hot and the door closed - full humidity dome - and then kept them in the smaller humidity chamber for 4 days - a time period that has worked in the past for me - many had some yellowish rot around the base of the graft after while..

    When I took them outta the humidity chamber the tips of the pereskiopsis shrivelled/contracted a bit too - I think they got over saturated and expanded, and then contracted - this may have messed up the scion's connection also..

    Could be the weather too - getting chillier here, shorter days - still a Mediterranean climate but my grafts this summer took really well..

  13. Posted

    Right - the seed code! Didn't want to confuse the customs people, even though all are permitted species.

    It is:

    1 - TPM x N1

    2 - Psycho0 x N1

    3 - Psycho0 x TPM

    4 - TPM x (SS02 x pachanoi)

    5 - N1 x TPQC

    6 - (SS02 x pachanoi) x TPM

    7 - TPQC x TPM

    8 - TPC x Juules, SS02, & (SS02 x pachanoi)

    Hope these work out most groovaliciously for everyone involved - I had some germination issues with them to start with, but they are coming up now (super stoked!). The TPC cross has been the quickest germinator for me, but the (SS02 x pachanoi) x TPM is pretty well 100% germinated and growing strong even though nothing happened for like 4 weeks- curious to know what others find.

    • Like 4

  15. Posted

    Nice to see some pics! I remember when Libertycaps made this cross - must have been a few years ago - didn't grow any out myself but I saw some pics of babies and they looked pretty cool. Your example is very nice indeed!

    • Like 2

  17. Posted

    Good news - the seeds have started germinating - woo! A friend of mine mentioned that sometimes cold is necessary to trigger germination as well - and it has cooled down here as of late.. It was really hot this summer - and these seed never cooled down much till recently at night..

    Might just be time also - like EG said above.. Anyhow, the seed took over a month to germinate, and not all the crosses have come up yet, but on a couple crosses I'm getting very good germination rates..

    I will conclude that fertilizing does not necessarily pose a problem - or maybe it did something wierd like make the seed grow thicker shells which kept them from responding to the environ quickly or something...

    Livin and learnin!

    • Like 3

  18. Posted · Edited by nitrogen

    Still nothing doing - praying to the cactus gods currently..

    You know though, I had some Roseii #1 open pollinated seeds last year that took several weeks to germinate - nothing was doing after a couple weeks so I threw a whole bunch more in there figuring it was a seed issue - about a month or so after that all the sudden I had a small lawn of Roseii - must have been 80% germination, but they took many weeks.. I had not seen that before, usually my seeds seem to sprout within a week or two.. it is late in the season here in the northern hemisphere - days are much shorter than they were in summer

  19. Posted

    I've often thought that making a skin moisturizer out of tricho flesh/slime would be awesome - whenever I work with a bunch of it in terms of chopping it up the skin on my hands feels great - so now, when i'm doing any sort of chopping of cactus flesh, I wipe it all over my face and such - nice stuff

  22. Posted

    Thx for the kind words - glad y'all like! Let's hope we get good germination rates on these. The TPC is the one that freaks out houseguests - they're like "WTF is that??"

    Stillman - my climate is in the southwestern USA - basically pretty dry and sunny a lot - not quite desert but in that direction - only rains maybe 10 days a year, and only during the winter. I had not been fertilizing these cacti much this past couple years, and only using organics when I did - being rootbound in pots and a bit stressed seems to lead to flowering - my guess is they think they better do so since their own existence is in jeopardy.

    Midway through the fruiting though I hit all my cacti with a couple pretty strong does of 20-20-20 Miracle grow - wow, that stuff gets them growing! Hope it affects the seed germination favorably as well

    • Like 1

  23. Posted · Edited by nitrogen

    I didn't want to post this straight away in the Seed and Plant Exchange due to limited seed - but here's a seed giveaway combined with a picture thread - if you want to grow any or all of these shoot me a PM with your addy and I'll try and get these seeds out to you.

    The T. bridgesii v "SS02" x T. pachanoi v. "Mel/vin is seed grown by my friend Mel/vin and given to me years ago - the plant in the pics is the parent plant - longer spines like SS02 but grows a bit fatter like pachanoi. A strangely beautiful and thoroughly groovy plant.

    The T. peruvianus monstrose (TPM) waffles between regular and monstrose growth, but the monstrose is dominant - columns start out normal and then get super weird - and the freakish qualities certainly came through the other time it was crossed - fortunately this year I have it in more crosses, and got more seed total :)

    The T. peruvianus cristata (TPC) is a new addition to the hybrid pool - large freakish peruvianus cristata - even the flower was mutant - I crossed the single fruit with Juules, SS02, and (SS02 x pachanoi) - basically I hit it with all three of those hoping one would take - the seedlings may be any one of those three fathers or a mix of them - I hit it with Juules first, then SS02 a few hours later, and then (SS02 x pachanoi) a few hours after that - maybe Juules got through the most? Who knows..

    N1 is a bridgesii that is excellent in all the ways that matter - one of my fav plants and I'm totally stoked about the Psycho0 x N1 cross - those should be some seriously beautiful and badass bridgesii seedlings - probably fatter and longer spined than typical bridgesii as well, based on the parents..

    The T. pachanoi "quasi-cristata" (TPQC) is a non-PC pachanoi type that grew crested after an apparent snail attack - maybe it is genetic in there somewhere and the snail attack caused it to come out, or maybe it is purely from the infection - regardless its a beautiful pachanoi though I haven't taken good care of it these past couple years..

    T. bridgesii "Psycho0" is, well, Psycho0, and was sent to me by PD a few years ago - strong work m8!

    Here's the crosses:

    TPM x N1
    TPM x (SS02 x pachanoi v. "Mel/vin")
    Mel/vin x TPM
    Psycho0 x N1
    Psycho0 x TPM
    TPQC x TPM
    N1 x TPQC
    TPC x Juules, SS02, & Mel/vin
    Mel/vin x TPC


    TPM:
    TPM-1.jpg
    sept2009018.jpg
    TPM62007.jpg


    TPQC:
    Jan24th023.jpg
    IMG_1470.jpg

    Psycho0:
    cellphoneperspective001.jpg
    June13th2009Collection008.jpg
    IMG_1471.jpg

    N1:
    Jan24th024.jpg
    july19th2009004.jpg
    july19th2009005.jpg
    2009_0114Image0009.jpg

    SS02 x pachanoi:
    SS02xPach1_zps7cc7a0b2.jpg
    SS02xPach2_zps80f14d3d.jpg

    TPC:
    IMG_3048.jpg
    IMG_3044.jpg
    IMG_3050.jpg
    IMG_3055.jpg

    cheers!

    • Like 45

  24. Posted

    Cool, lets hope its not an issue. My crosses should all be totally compatible in terms of the species.

    The one I sowed first is a crested pachanoi mother plant, but it became crested after a nasty slug attack - the other plant I have of it is not crested - when I offer the cross I'm calling it T. pachanoi "quasi-cristata" because of this. So, if it is crested not because of genetics, but because of some sort of infection, maybe that made the seed non-viable? To make matters more tricky it is crossed with TPM as a parent, and the other time I had TPM in a cross only about half the seeds seemed to germinate for people anyhow..

    I just sowed the other 8 or so crosses this weekend - the TPQC plant is only in one other of the crosses, so if it is unfit to be a parent, there will still be other crosses which shouldn't have issues - I was going to see if they sprout before I offer the seed to the community, for quality control purposes, but Evil Genius may be right in that I sowed them too quick - I literally sowed mine right out of the fruit, and then dried out the rest of them.

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