Wobbygong

Torsten is doubtful of the existence of gods and spirits and hence approaches the astonishing healing power of plants such as iboga on a pharmacological basis with full recognition of the cultural context. Science takes a bow

ten weeks and still counting

Well mine arrived today. In fact i have just finished planting them. I also have some peres on order so its all getting set to go. Hopefully one day I'll have some pix to show. Many thanks, its much appreciated. cheers wob

I should have made it clearer, it was getting late! I dont put regular plant pots ( ie ones with holes in the bottom) into the container of water. It is like you say a kind of double tub In fact I used takeaway food containers for seed "pots". These of course are sealed and self contained. So the contents of the seed container are not in direct contact with the heated water. I could have used dry sand in them if i wanted. Cups or regular pots in plastic bags work the same way because they too are sealed off...that's if the bag is the right way up of course. cheers

fwiw I'm new to cactus seed growing and i didn't have a heat mat. So about a month ago i devised i this fish tank heater method: I got a rectangular plastic container (roughly 450 x 300mm) and put about 30 - 40 mm of water in it. Into that i put the fish tank heater set on 25C or whatever. Then I just plunked the seed tubs into the heated water 'bath'. The water level rose to about 60 mm. The weight of the sand inside the tubs stopped them from floating off. The thermostat in the heater keeps the water temperature steady. And because the the tubs are surrounded by water the wet mix inside them is kept at the same temperature as the water. I was concerned that there could be a hot-spot near the heater. But when i checked with a thermometer this wasn't the case. In fact the water seemed to heat surprisingly uniformly, even when the container was full of seed tubs. I guess the water mixes through convection. Often the heater is touching the plastic tubs etc, but there's never a problem, the water absorbs the heat. The temperature of mixture in the pots took about 45min or so to stabilize at the water temperature. This was with closed seed tubs, open ones had a T about 1C lower than the water. Its cheap and gives me very good control over the temperature in the seed tubs. The temp in the tubs is uniform...( I obsessively measured it over 2days b4 risking my precious new seeds!). Ive used cups and bags in it too...seems to work the same. Like I said I'm new to this, and i only made this a month ago, but it seems to work a treat. I grew my first cactus seeds -lophos - and they mainly sprouted in about 9 - 14 d and stacks of trichs which germed in about 4-5d.

That's a generous offer, thanks! I've wanted to try growing catha for a while. I'll send the pm.

Am I too late to throw my hat in? I've liked cacti for years but I'm new to the world of their propagation. Recently i sprouted my first cactus seeds (13 L. will.) When they were about 2 weeks old i grafted one of them onto a small opuntia pad. That was 10 days ago, but it still looks fat, healthy and green so I'm hoping it'll be ok!

Those red and yellow mutant Gymnos seem to survive well on Hylocereus stock. So if the all-yellow areole graft developed into a weak shoot maybe it would be poss to regraft it to try to obtain a stronger union. (Just a thought - but viruses are known to produce desirable colour variants (eg. some tulips) - maybe they're involved with some cactus variegation as well.)

Teo, are you still interested in feedback, or has it gone beyond the draft stage?

Harrumph! I knew that just as soon as he tried to make being 'raped by the devil' sound like a bad thing.

Thank god it was only a pachanoi from which she took the bite. Had it been a bridgesii the facial injuries could have been far more severe.

Ah ha! Got it this time. Thanks for that. At first glance it looks like a very informative book, I'm looking forward to reading it. Many thanks to Teo and all concerned.

G'day everyone, This is my first post, so greetings and salutations. This seems to be a great site with lotsa useful information and friendly members. Anyhow, I just downloaded a pdf from the aforementioned Hotmail site. The doc. isn't about grafting cacti at all but raising them from seed instead, it is titled 'Growing cactus from seed indoors, cheaply, and under lights' by Leo Martin. It is an informative piece, and has some interesting ideas about cactus seed raising, but it doesn't really mention grafting. I think its a different article to the one being discussed here. Did the pdf get changed recently? (Not complaining, just curious!) Wob