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So thought I'd update this somewhat as it's out of date! All was fine and dandy until we built a garage! Then it was temporarily moved a few feet backwards, onto the grass behind the garage. Looks ok right? Turns out grass and weeds like greenhouses even more than cacti! However, I had a plan! I relocated it again to it's permanent new home, reboxed and tamped the gravel (bought a tamper as suggested above). One of the great things about this site is there's room to expand if I ever replace it :D With just a gravel floor, weeds still come through and are a real pain. I bought 100KG of instant concrete, and spread it out dry over the gravel: I then turned the hose onto sprinkle, and wet the instant concrete thoroughly. Flattened out with the help of a straight piece of timber. It turned out pretty well considering it was a cheap job

Hey all, just had a couple of big tree stumps ground out, and also in the process of building a garden. Does anyone know if wood chip/mulch is any good for cacti? cheers

Hi Guys Wonder if you could give me an ID for this prickly fellow. Originally thought it was terscheckii, but it doesn't look anything like the seed grown terscheckii I have - it's spines are much more robust. Cheers

Got a picture of it? I've had plenty of luck straightening up bent plants, especially brigesii. If you stake them or lean them in a way that causes gravity to work against the bend, they come right.

Just to confirm, the trees were some sort of pine (wood slightly red), and a liquid amber (very white wood). I am not putting the chips on top, I was going to mix it through the soil if the plants don't mind. I imagine it would take 12 months or so to break down? I don't have room to compost it first so it's either mix it in, or take it to the dump!

I would strip the soil off them completely - hose them off so they're completely bare. If you notice any bugs, try spraying with meths, leave to dry, then dunk in water for a couple of hours. Then dry out for a week or two indoors, before repotting in fresh good mix. If you're coming into winter, this is an awkward time for repotting lophs, but once repotted I would keep them indoors with decent light, but dry until november at the earliest.

Great score man! To me it looks like some sort of cleistocactus, but that's a stab in the dark.

Here's a few of mine winteri, thelogonus, strigosus, pachanoi, elongata, bocosana

Do you reckon that's variegation? Looks more like malnutrition to me, be interested to see it in 6 months after a repot and lots of nutes.

No it isn't.

That's agave americana. Kill it. Kill it with fire. I've seen one go from 1 foot to 8 foot tall in 2 years after being put in the ground. They're like a blimmen weed! Tell him to bin it and get something nice like agave parryi / attenuata / victoriae-reginae

They look a lot like macrogonus I have grown from seed, and would be the right size for a couple I sold on TM a year or so ago... did they happen to mention where they came from?

Holy crap Micro, would you be ok with uploading the full size / original files to dropbox or something? I'd love to be able to use those on my desktop

So, Martin flowered this weekend, unfortunately I was out of Aucks and missed it until it was half closed so I didn't take pics. Definitely a huge flower, almost the size of a dinner plate when fully open. Good news though, many other trich flowers opened at the same time, so there's a high chance it was pollinated. Also, there's another bud, so if the warm weather holds up we could have another flower in a few weeks.

Sweet photos! What's the pink one Micromegas?

Potting up some echinopsis hybrids., Some general adminration for my asterias and other buttons which are thriving in my greenhouse

Heh, photo might be misleading, it's 20-30cm across... definitely not a spach or a cross of one!

For ages I had this guy pegged as T.Huasca But after stumbling across this page I am pretty sure it's Cleistocactus winteri forma cristata. On the plus side, check out the size of this monster, gives me something to aspire to!! http://www.cactus-art.biz/schede/CLEISTOCACTUS/CLeistocactus_winteri/Cleistocactus_winteri_cristata/Cleistocactus_winteri_cristata.htm

Seed grown bridgey, fell over last year and snapped but grafted itself back together. Looking a bit dehydrated above the break, reckon I should cut the tip off after it flowers? 'Martin' (can anyone remember what this was id'd as? T.glaucus?)

1) Macrogonus from cactiseeds.co.nz seed 2) Anyone want to ID this monster? I thought it was Tercheckii, but the latest spination makes me wonder?

Peruvanoid from my previous post with open flower, and Trichocereus huascha var. pecheretianus about to flower

Photos from this morning in the garden:

Good work Snowfella!! That looks amazing! Needle-nose pliers.

Watered, weeded, and moved a very sunburned tbm variegate out of the sun

I would like to know if there are tequila agaves in NZ?