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The Corroboree

Quixote

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Posts posted by Quixote

  1. Posted · Edited by Quixote

    Don't they always do this? I thought they grow fast initially as the plant uses the reserves that were stored in the seed, then the growth stalls for awhile until the seedlings get a foothold & send out roots to find their own food.

    I don't know. It's my first attempt at growing these from seeds. I don't have any heating mat or flourescent lights, just a little pot in a window sill...

    I hope you are right. They don't seem to be unhappy, just not in the mood for growing.

    Might be because they need the warmth, but without the direct sun. And the only way I have of making it hot for them is to place them in the sun...

  2. Posted

    I successfully sprouted three little loph seedlings, and they look healthy enough, but stopped growing.

    They basically haven't grown since they sprouted, each of them has those little hairs/baby spines, they are dark green colour, but they just won't grow!

    In the beginning, I kept them under plastic wrap, but I took that off because I feared mold (it killed a previous batch).

    Then I had them in the sun for some time, they turned reddish so I put them in the shade again. Now they are no longer red, and I have tried having them in half shade. In the last couple of weeks I put them in quite a lot of sun, thinking they might miss sun and warmth. They don't seem to be hurt, but won't grow either.

    What can I do?

    I fertilized them only once.

  5. Posted

    I have no medical insurance of any kind, yet receive the finest medical care available at basically no charge.

    free doctor visits, free glasses, free hearing aids, free xrays & ultrasound exams, free orthodics, free visits to the ER & free hospital stays. I do have an $8 co-pay for medicines or drugs in pill form, thus the $32 charge for pills of warfarin, doxycycline, clindamycin, & hydrocodone. No charge for 2800 ml of Vancomycin in iv form, a rather powerful antibiotic.

    However the initial 'buy in' price was rather steep, volunteering 4 years of my life in the Air Force during the Vietnam war. I was one of the lucky ones, coming out pretty much unscathed.

    You fought in Vietnam for 4 years and they stil made you pay 32 dollars? Over here in socialist paradise, we sit on our bum till it falls off, then they fix it for free - apart from paying most of our income in tax.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted · Edited by Quixote

    Generally no these plants behaved like this due etiolation which occurs when the light levels are too low.

    I often have this issue when rooting new cuttings.

    These plants have now been in direct sunlight for a few months so they should won't stretch to find the sun anymore.

    The pups should come out nice a fat and within 4-8 months be 75% as wide as the base.

    Well, since those are growing in pots, won't the new stems just start etoliating too, when light levels drop in winter? Cutting off the stems to stop skinny growth seems like "kicking the can down the road" to me.

    I generally keep my cacti from growing thin, by not watering them in winter, and I keep my livingroom quite cool. But still, they have a bit of waist for each growth season. It annoys me.

  11. Posted

    Thanks for all advice. I know it would be better to show some pictures of my setup, but I threw away the soil in great disappointment before I thought of taking any pics.

    Next time I will try the open setup with sand and misting a couple of times daily.

  12. Posted

    Well, today my last surviving Lophophora seedling succumbed to mold and died. I had around 5-6 seedlings, but lost them one by one.

    Now I'm trying to figure out what to do differently next time.

    Had them covered by plastic film, and poked holes in it day by day to make the air less humid gradually. I guess I wasn't poking enough holes rapidly enough.

    Or maybe I should only keep the plastic wrap until the seeds sprout and the seedlings turn green?

    It seemed to me the seedlings would quickly develop in the beginning , but then their development would just stop. They would sit there without changing until mold kicked in.

  15. Posted

    I have another hypothesis: it's a behaviour meant for mountainsides.

    In my case, the cactus is in a pot by a window that goes from floor to ceiling. That means it's getting a lot of light from one direction, and nearly nothing from the other.

    This seems similar to the conditions of a plant growing on a mountainside, with the sunlight coming from one direction and the mountain on the other. So, why would the cactus bend towards the mountain in this case?

    To avoid falling over. Imagine that you are standing on a thin ledge with a vertical drop in front of you and a cliffside behind you. What do you instinctively do? Lean back towards the mountainside of course. If you stand straight or lean towards the sun in this case, winds sweeping along the mountain might topple you off.

    Well, it's just an idea for now.

  17. Posted · Edited by Quixote

    I just discovered that my big Pachanoi (about 1.80 metres tall) actively bends AWAY from the light.

    It's growing in a pot by the window, and for many months I have been trying to straighten it up, since it's leaning in one direction. So I turned it so that it was leaning away from the window, into the apartment. My idea was that it would stretch towards the sun. But it never straightened up. Just kept growing more and more off-center.

    Then finally I tried turning it around again, so that it was leaning towards the window. In just one single day, it straightened up, and even started to lean the opposite way! I was really surprised about this, as it goes against everything I thought I knew about plants.

    Have any of you noticed the same?

    • Like 1

  23. Posted · Edited by Quixote

    My house is not that cold, it's just that there's not much light in the winter - down to 7 hours of very weak sunlight a day. So if I had a tiny loph seedling, would it be ok to just keep it in the window or would I need to rig up electric lights for it?

  25. Posted

    Just got my first loph fruit with 1 (one!) seed, and now I can't wait to plant it. But autumn is coming soon in North Europe, would it be possible to germinate the seed to be ready for next summer's growing season?

    My cacti are all indoors in pots.

    Sorry if this has been asked before, I did some searching here and on Google, but didn't find the exact answer.

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