First Time Germination Trichocereus peruvianus

[sappyroot]

Hello All,

This is my first attempt to germinate anything, so far with no success...

I ended up going with the rockwool ( passive hydroponics) setup after reading about some high success rate with them.

I started out preparing my "heat'n'grow" tank by sterilising it with bleach( paying fine attention to making sure all the residue was gone afterwards)

I then prepared a tank with 5 litres of water and the following: -

10ml (2 teaspoons) of All in one Liquid nutrients

1-2 drops of rootzone

1-2 drops of Superthrive

and soaked the growool blocks in this for 1 hour.

I then placed the Trichocereus peruvianus (KK 242) seeds in the growool holes and placed the propagation unit in a cubboard without sun.

3 days later i checked the blocks to notice they where soaked not damp. ( That's what you got for doing it after downing a bottle of Cab Sav)

So i took the seeds out of the rockwool and did the process over, this time making sure the rockwool was damp not soaked. ( with new rockwool blocks)

I live in Sydney Australia, and the weather has been fluctuating between rather hot and cold/damp for the last 2 weeks.

I've been mysting the rockwool ever day or so with tap water( no nutrients added) when they where starting to dry out.

The last week has been rather cold, and I haven't needed to myst them. The rockwool blocks seems to be rather damp and cold.

I didn't go with the heatpad because I thought summer would do the trick on it's own, but it doesn't seem to be getting there.

Any suggestions?

The seed in the picture is from one of the growool blocks after 2 weeks, they all look the same.

With the ventilation I've opened the left vent a tiny bit, just to let some air in.

[occidentalis]

Sounds like you are creating a lot of complications for yourself. Here's my method:

Oven-cook moist sandy soil mix

place in trays

place seeds on soil surface and dust with a bit of fine sand

water

put trays in ziplock bags

place in warm sunny spot and forget for at least a week

ensure they stay moist and watch for sprouts

when they've germinated (1-4 weeks), move to a warm shady spot.

keep moist and open the bags to air them out every couple of days

when they have exhausted their seed reserves, give them some very week inorganic ferts.

They do like it warm and I would suggest that is your main problem.

[mr b.caapi]

ditto on that method.

note. do not place in full sun, as this will cook your poor babies.

[sparky]

I'm having the same troubles myself being a first time cactus grower.

Thanks for the tips.

[Dark empire]

its good to see that your putting alot of work into to growing cacti. Its hard to find someone who puts that much work in but like thay said keep it a bit more simple than that. All I usally do is plant them in a small pot, water, place a bag on top and spray it with some black paint to keep it warm and keep out the sun.

but good luck

[sappyroot]

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions.

creach, in the future ill give your germination tips a shot.

I also believe it's the cold weather that's retarding the germination.

so I'll be getting a heating pad within the next couple of days to help things along till the weather stabilizes.

I decided in the meantime to hack up a $0 budget heatpad. ( I'm a poor uni student)

requirements:-

1x old computer power supply.

some spare cabling

2 x peltier plates.( or more)

1x plate of metal

Some pebbles/rocks

and a box.

And here is the finale, works rather well...

Initially the temps ended up around 30°C inside the propergation unit, so I added some more pebbles between the plates and the unit, now its stable around 22/25°C.

(Ignore the temp in the picture,the unit was off at that point)

P.S this idea isn't really worth following unless you have decent wattage peliter plates, the everyday 64 watters you'll find at tandy/Jaycar will be rooted by morning, unless you hack up a divider circuit, add some sort of cooling unit or have a piss poor PSU.

[Rev]

Shameless plug i know but...

Buy MS smiths closte cactus book from SAB

its cheap and follow it closely until u know what u are doing

buy good seed

ive bought seed from everywhere and sometimes i get 3 plants out of 500 seeds

othertimes they come up like a lawn

The ICarosDNA seed i have now is shit hot. Big fats seeds with plenty of energy that support fast high germinating plants that are easy to raise

im doing tests on othr fresh in stocky types now to see how they compare

I use takeawy containers of nuked (3 minutes on high) moist sand

allow too cool and plant then seal up

write label on with permannet marker and place isn a bright but indirectly lighted warm place - or under fluoros in winter

levae sealed till they are a few montsh old unless fungsu attacks

harden off slowly and mulch with perlite

etc

but read MS's book

its all u need to know as a noob