BBGONE

Some interesting info about Lophs. watering (in summer): Unlike so many articles I have read that say water your plants once a year, only if there is a full moon, only water with water that has run over a naked virgin etc (I am left wondering how many of these plants the authors have actually grown) Lophophora can take a lot of watering growing in this soil mix, rainwater is best but tap water is also fine. Due to shortage of space, for the last 2 years we have grown the plants outside for the entire growing season (UK) with last year (2005) being one of the wettest on record. The plants were out with no protection from April until October with the soil wet almost every day of the season. The result: healthy fat plants with a much better colouring than those grown in the glasshouses and with no pests. The plants were fed with a 12.5-25-25 fertilizer, every two - three weeks - available from our store. After these amazing results, I will continue growing them this way.[/CODE][/i] from http://www.divinecac...cultivation.php And this is excerpt from another growin experience: http://www.bcss.org....154293&start=20 [i][color=#333333]The Lophophora obtained from seed grow relatively quickly on their roots. [/color] [color=#333333]If fertilizer is provided regularly, it grow fast.[/color][/i] [color=#333333]Picture of his Lophs sowed in March 2010[/color] made in November 2011 (he used [color=#333333]fertilizer "flortis" once in every two waterings. [/color][color=#333333]Composition: [/color][b]NPK 4-6-8+B+Cu+Mn+Zn[/b] [color=#333333]He used half the recommended amount (he added 5 ml of fertilizer per liter of water). [/color] This corresponds to 200 mg of Nitrogen per liter of water. [color=#333333])[/color]

Nitrogen and the light is the source of it. I started to fertilize my 2 year old scopulicola, that was dormant all winter and placed her under fluorescent lights and fed her with hydroponic fertilizer. It started to grow a pup on the top.

In my case "better" means bigger and healthy plants. Dont know what the others mean by better:)

People also are eating fabricated food, and seems are more happy to do it:) They also don't live in caves, they grow cows and pigs for their food purposes. They use growing plants under artificial lights all year round. Because they have intelect, and they can use (after some experiments) some traits of plants for their purposes. People also use pills to treat diseases, which earlier were untreatable. And life expectancy now much longer, than a hundred years ago. Dont you use the modern things? If you dont like modern things, you can not use them, and live in a cave, and eat raw food, dont take pills or ointments to treat a disease. and so plants can benefit from the modern things. Of course if someone takes them from nature to the peoples habitat to grow them in pots. Plants can give you hints, happy they are or not from their appearance, growth rate, and health. And I dont think plants care much about sacred they are or not. They need energy (light) and food (nutrients), and they will not grow better if you will worship them. People think that these plants are sacred and exterminated large population of cacties for their sacrednes. Plants would be more happy if they are not sacred. At least they live in a such case longer and these plants existed long before mankind got existent.

They can live without wintering and be happy. The only thing you need is T5 fluorescent lights. 110 W U - tubes is enough for 6 good sized plants. They can grow all througth winter, under lamps. And if you fertilize them, then you can get mature cacties 6 times faster. And they are even better than in nature.

GrownUp cacties (4 and 6 years old) http://www.flickr.com/photos/lptscsi/sets/72157629576331734/

Harvesting seeds http://www.flickr.com/photos/lptscsi/sets/72157629940682223/

More pictures with cacties on passive hydroponics (lophs can sustain high water and fertilizer content when grown under lamps) http://www.flickr.com/photos/lptscsi/sets/72157629576215954/

I'm using fluoros, U- shaped osram 55 W tubes with reflector. With fluoros they can be closer to lamps, about 7-10 cm distance. I think that any ferilizer can be used (hydroponics fertilizers are much better to use on nonsoil substrate, so use hydroponic fertilizer). It is not just the matter of NPK, they hold stable PH of substrate. I use my own hydroponic solution. Etisso hydro vital has N:P:K 5,2 : 5.0 : 4,2 Microelements, Vitamin B1 He also used Kemira Lux ferilizer, and it also worked well. So any fertilizer that keeps stable PH, has balanced nutrients (not cactus ferilizers, the have low nitrogen) and better to contain also microelements.

I depends on the size of the container. In report, the author fertilized them two times a week with hydroponic solution. An d watered only when it was hot, and substrate dried more quickly as usual. But they were grown in small cups. I think when the amount of substrate is larger, then watering them with hydroponic solution could be more rare. In any case vermiculite has good drainage ability, and could be washed with clear water to remove excessive salts. Under lamps, they did not rot, although vermiculite holds a lot of water. And when he tried hydroponic method for them he used 2-3 cm layer of grit on top of vermiculite. Here in local store i have found several types of vermiculite. 1) Flaky type, with uneven sized particles. Low quality. Maybe good to add to the soil in gardening. 2) Even particles, yellow white types. As was used in that grow report. Good for growing adult seedlings and plants. 3) Brownish, small sized particles. Good for seed germination. And it has different particle size from small (1 mm) to large (5-6 mm). For germination use smaller size, for growing adults larger. One more good characteristc of vermiculite, is that when it is dry, it is very easy to take cacties from substrate and repot them. In the authors grow report, he gives distance from sodium lamp: He started seedling with 150 Watts sodium lamp, at half meter distance. Then, after they are 3 months old, he brought 150 W lamp to 30 cm distance. When they are 14 months old, he used 250 W sodium lamp at 37 cm distance. He used timer set for lighting 14 hours a day. (there are also comments with the posted pictures)

Vermiculite - it is a 100% fact. It is well described by the author - how he used it. I also has some plants growing in vermiculite, and it looks exactly the same. When wet it is not glistening. About LEDs i'm not 100% sure, because it was reported not by the author of that report, and there was not any pictures. So it can be anything that caused slower growing, maybe not using fertilizers, distance from lights, LED power and etc. P.S. - about perlite: it is not suitable to grow anything in wet 100% perlite. When wet it turns like cement, clogs all drainage. Maybe only to root cuttings (without watering) or adding some to soil mixtures. And one more reason to use vermiculite for Lophs growing - it is soft and carrot like roots have room for growing, it can be compressed and expelled from the pot. I have grown my Loph in pummice, lava, ceolite mixture, and when roots were grown larger there was no room for them. Yesterday i reported my Loph in vermiculite. So i can report on its growing in some time. I'm using two 55 W Osram high intensity fluorecent lights.

And also it was reported that LED grow lights was much inferior to sodium lamps for growing lophs. Growth rates are lower. I think, that there is no need in grow box, just lighting from the top, because lophs are plump cacties. In contrast, Trichs., becase they are tall, need side reflectors for good lighting. Pachanoi grown on hydroponics (for comparison) http://www.flickr.com/photos/lptscsi/7128789515/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/lptscsi/7128808357/in/photostream/

There are also some shots of plants grown in hydroponic condition. But growth rate is the same and so it has no advantage over simple growin under lamps and watering with fertilizer solution. Just for comparison, that is also can be done and working http://www.flickr.com/photos/lptscsi/6982605174/in/photostream/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/lptscsi/7128689985/in/photostream/

In case of trouble, i just take new tray with soil and transplant all good seedlings to new substrate. Just for prevention of molds i use spraying of the seedlings with fungicide solution (maybe it is not nessesary, but does not hurt). I used fludioxonil (brand name MAXIM).

For cacties the best is gravel culture conditions. That is growing them soilless on substrates like pumice, lava, zeolite. There are a lot of optimal substrates for gravel culture, such as Seramis, Lechuza pon, Bims, Akadama, Vulcantec soiles mixtures . I grow T. bridgesii seedlings under fluorescent lights on Lechuza pon substrate. For them i use hydroponic fertilizer. They grow super fast. From time to time they need substrate washing with water to remove excess fertilizer.

But these are roots, no trouble. Seen them very often. They are seen when seed germinated on surface of the soil, but not under it. It is better to use very thin layer upon seed before germination.

But these are roots, no trouble. Seen them very often. They are seen when seed germinated on surface of the soil, but not under it. It is better to use very thin layer upon seed before germination.

One more choice Very High Output (VHO) fluorecent tubes (Spectralux) http://www.sunlightsupply.com/p-12128-spectralux-t5-vho-fluorescent-grow-lamps.aspx These T5 VHO (Very High Output) lamps are a brand new technology. T5 HO (High Output) lamps have an initial rating of 5,000 lumens. The new VHO lamps are 7,200 lumens. They have to be paired with a VHO fixture such as the Solar Wind or Solar Flare. and Solar Flare T5 (VHO) Fluorescent Fixtures http://www.sunlightsupply.com/p-13024-solar-flare-t5-vho-fluorescent-fixtures.aspx * 95% reflective European aluminum reflectors. * Major brand solid state electronic ballasts. * Dedicated 120v or 240v input power * Heavy duty white steel housing. * Louvered and slotted for efficient cooling capability. * Comes complete with 2 chrome wire hangers for mounting/hanging. * Grounded power cord. * VHO Lamps offer 7200 lumens - 95 watts each. * Daisy chain feature allows multiple fixtures to be plugged together. * Do not use HO lamps with VHO fixtures.

More deep info on cacti under lights: http://cactiguide.com/article/?article=article17.php The Light Spectrum As for picking the "right" wavelength of light to grow plants "best", that's a bit like trying to pick the right vitamin for people to live off. You can't do it, they're all important for different things. Specific wavelengths, or more importantly specific pigments activated by light at particular wavelengths, have been shown to control the orientation of plant's leaves and flowers relative to the sun, the orientation of chloroplasts within leaves, the quantity of chlorophyll generated within leaves, the size of the leaves, the opening and closing of stomata, the opening and closing of flowers, and the induction of flowering and fruiting. Mostly these wavelengths are towards the blue and green end of the spectrum, at the red end it is mostly just chlorophyll making sugar. Plant light sellers make a big deal out of the chlorophyll absorption spectrum and how green light is useless. There are many pigments in plants, not just chlorophyll, and plants can make use of light of any colour. Deep red light is the most efficient in terms of simple photosynthesis, but not to the huge extent usually claimed, and plants grown only in red light get leggy and overly lush. The first step is to add a little blue light, then the plants do better. Some people would claim that plants cannot be healthy without light that closely mimics full spectrum sunlight, others that monochromatic red light blows everything else out of the water. I don't see huge differences between them and going to extremes in either direction has big drawbacks. UV "stresses" plants and not much else. There is certainly no biological need for it and plants can grow without it. In the case of cacti, stressing the plant can be desirable, it produces heavy and dense spination, skin colouration, and "stunts" plants so that they are flatter. Shorter light wavelengths in general produce plants with shorter internodes, smaller leaves, and more branching. Its not quite that simple though, because the primary controller of internode length is the relative levels of red and far red (and near infra-red) light. This is one of the reasons that incandescent lights and HPS lights can produce severe etiolation. This particular combination of light wavelengths is generally ignored in the whole blue/red debate, partly because it is difficult to see the relevant wavelengths and partly because it is even more difficult to control them. Anecdotally, some cacti will not flower without high levels of UV. The high altitude Andean dwarf Opuntioids are one group, but potentially other mountain species like Pediocactus won't do well without UV. This is particularly relevant for plants which spend pretty much their entire lives behind a piece of glass or plastic which blocks virtually all the UV. It is obviously difficult to separate the effects of UV from full sun at high altitude from just having extremely high light intensity. As you'll see from reading the lizard pages, its hard to get anything like outdoor UV levels from a light. I don't worry too much since my plants get sun in the summer. -HID (High-Intensity Discharge) Lighting HID lamps are just not worth messing with at low powers, inefficient, poor life, hot, and generally not worth the trouble. Normally I would suggest you only use HID lights from about 250W upwards, ideally 400W, for their high efficiency and ability to provide high light intensity over a good sized area. Smaller lights produce less light, lose output fast, have shorter lives, and don't cover a large enough area. They could be used for high intensity lighting on a small number of plants, for example 150W would be good up to perhaps five square feet. That said, I would normally recommend something like a 4 x 54W T5 fluorescent system for someone looking at 150W HID bulbs. -Metal Halide Lighting Metal halides have long been the standard choice for growing high light plants, but that choice should no longer be automatic. High performance fluorescents such as T5HO and the newest VHO tubes offer competitive performance and some advantages. Few people will offer an unbiased comparison because they are trying to sell one product or the other. Metal halides offer a small extremely intense light source with high efficiency, but lumen maintenance, lifetime, and cost cannot compete with the best fluorescents. A good 125W pulse start metal halide will offer similar efficiencies to high intensity fluorescent lighting in a much smaller package, but will lose 30% of output in the first 5,000 hours, so there would have to be a pressing need for small size or extreme light intensity to make this worthwhile. Mostly you should stick to the efficient and widely available 400W metal halides which are more convenient than fluorescents for lighting large areas and for providing high light intensities. Watch out for those metal halide bulbs, they will be putting out a lot less light after you've used them for six months. Historically, plant growers have replaced metal halide bulbs every 6-12 months, although they will run for several years. For a variety of reasons, plant light sellers are often still wedded to an obsolete technology known as probe-start. Modern halide lighting is pulse start, they last longer, they don't lose light as they age, they start quicker, and they are less likely to explode, but they need a different ballast. Pulse start ballasts and bulbs are generally more expensive, but plant lighting is often sold at a huge markup anyway and you should be able to find a pulse start ballast and bulb for less than $170. You'll mostly find them sold as business and warehouse lighting. Another worthwhile efficiency improvement is to get an electronic ballast (often called a digital ballast by plant light sellers although strictly that isn't quite the same thing), they will save about 10% on your electricity bill. Another very confusing issued much abused by those trying to sell you something is heat. You will get the same amount of heat from 400W of fluorescent tubes as you do from a 400W metal halide. You might get it in different places, but don't be fooled by the fact that one is a tiny raging hot bulb and the other is many metres of moderately warm glass. Still, metal halides inside a home have several disadvantages including fire hazard and fading nearby fabrics. And of course if you don't need 400W of light then there's no point wasting all that electricity and getting way more heat than necessary. Metal halide lamps radiate more heat as infra-red (and UV also) than fluorescents which can be good on an adult cactus but may be too harsh for seedlings. -HPS (High Pressure Sodium) Lighting HPS lamps alone would not be a good choice for growing most succulents. They'd tend to etiolate and not grow dense spines or develop good colour. Use metal halides or a mix unless you are just supplementing natural light. HPS is waaaayyyy better in efficiency than flourescents or metal halide in terms of lumen output but it is in a restricted spectrum that isn't always suitable on its own, certainly not for most cacti although I'd bet that Pereskiopsis would just love it. Metal halide retailers like to compare their products in PAR watts where they can exceed HPS lamps, although this is slightly misleading. When properly measured as a photon flux the HPS are still better. HPS technology has not advanced as much as metal halide in recent years and the gap is narrower than it once was. Digital ballasts are available, but the basic lamp technology has not really moved on. HPS bulbs have always offered better lifetimes and better lumen maintenance than metal halide but they haven't improved as much so the difference is now much less. HPS lamps don't quite reach peak performance until the 600W-1000W range although 400W bulbs are pretty good. There are an increasing number of crossover HOD lights offering spectrums that are a combination of HPS and MH, or with swappable HPS and MH bulbs in the same fitting, but you always pay a price for the flexibility. -LED (Light Emitting Diode) Lighting Many many experiments have been documented using LED grow lights. Performance in terms of plant mass and size is comparable to other light sources at the same light intensity, although it can be very difficult to determine the true intensity of a non-white light source. The typical "red plus a little blue" LED light usually produces different growth patterns, primarily less compact and less branched plants. Note that this is in stark contrast to the claims made by LED plant light sellers who would have you believe that three LEDs running off an AA battery are equivalent to a 1000W metal halide lamp. I look at LEDs every year or two, but so far I haven't tried them on plants. Until recently they simply haven't been powerful enough or efficient enough at producing light (compared to the best conventional solutions) to make them more than a toy. Now they are available at performance levels which are potentially useful but initial costs are still high, extremely high for commercial LED plant lights. I should probably try a small DIY LED setup but its not going to happen this winter. By next year of course they'll be another 50% better! The specific wavelengths of LEDs are often given as an huge advantage and used to justify how a massively under-powered light can perform like its bigger brothers. This is 90% marketing hype; LEDs happen to provide light at just a single wavelength so make it into a selling point. In practice, fluorescent tubes have been available for decades providing virtually the same spectrum. The earliest were called Gro-Lux and they were not massively better than simple white light sources, and with significant drawbacks in terms of efficiency and operating life. Today you can still find similar lights being sold, google for "PURple". Gro-Lux fluorescents are still available but they now have a wider spread of light, still mainly blue and red but with other wavelengths also. Experiments have shown variable results from just using monochromatic blue and red light vs white light, sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit worse, but don't expect the spectrum to change the laws of physics for you. The monochromatic light output, and particularly in far red and blue wavelengths, are very difficult to compare with white light sources. They will look relatively dim because our eyes don't see those wavelengths, and for the same reason the output in lumens is not directly comparable (although it can be converted if you know the wavelength), but few manufacturers will quote accurate photon outputs for their lights. They often won't give you the total light output in any units. Buyer beware! LEDs produce such strongly directional light, without any need for additional reflectors, that penetration is actually quite good. You would have to check your particular LEDs since some produce a much wider spread of light than others. Many LEDs produce almost their their light within a 10 degree cone, much better than you will achieve with even a very good conventional reflector. An LED with a 45 degree light cone would not be so good and you would have to put it quite close or use additional reflectors. The large arrays that must be used with LEDs naturally produce quite good directional light with good penetration. Even if the LEDs at the edge of the array are sending a little light away from the plants, the vast majority in the middle of the arrays are hitting plants even with their off-centre light. This feature is often used to provide misleading comparisons, where a very powerful conventional light produces similar growth to a small LED light simply because 90% of the conventional light never hits the plants. There are some other interesting points about LEDs. The long lifetime is often quoted as an advantage. Typically a life of 50,000 - 100,000 hours will be quoted although some of the newer high power LEDs have shorter lives. What isn't highlighted is that the light output of an LED decreases more or less steadily from day one until it is too dim to see. You need to look carefully and see what the actual lumen depreciation is because it may become unusable as a plant light after 10,000 - 20,000 hours. Of course that is still several years and by then LEDs will cost less than a dollar and be brighter than the sun. The best fluorescent tubes lose 5% of output over a 20,000-30,000 hour lifetime, modern HID lamps 10%-20%. LEDs don't really outperform in this respect. High power LED arrays must be very carefully designed. Cool operation is often given as an advantage, but LEDs actually produce a similar quantity of heat to other plant lights. The difference is where that heat goes. In a metal halide lamp a very high proportion is radiated away, which can be bad for plants that get too close but at least stops the bulb melting! LEDs radiate away relatively little heat, they just dump it into the semiconductor and will rapidly deteriorate without careful heatsink design. Its hard to tell by looking, but cheap LED lights will likely fail long before that 50,000 hours. I haven't yet seen LEDs for sale which have the same lumen (or photon) output per watt as modern metal halides or fluorescents. Maybe they exist or maybe not, the only ones I've seen are in laboratories or for special order at a special price. Again, the people selling the LEDs like to claim they are more efficient than other light sources, but they also like to use what is essentially obsolete technology for their comparisons. They also like to run "tests" with poor quality conventional lighting where the majority of the light never even lands on the plants. Under those conditions, LEDs blow away conventional lighting at the same power levels, but they don't when you compare best practice setups for both types of light. The top end LEDs available in the UK far exceed incandescents (although they still can't match the total output from a small area like a normal light bulb), are slightly better than compact fluorescents, are approaching mainstream triphosphor T8s on electronic ballasts, are still some way short of the best T5 and T8 tubes and similar up-to-date (pulse start, ceramic, digital ballast, etc.) metal halide lighting, and way short of HPS lights (which have their own drawbacks). I see reliable data from white light LEDs at around 70 lumens/W, with monochromatic LEDs a little better although you can't measure them in lumens/W. I expect around 90-100 lumens/W from my plant lights and I expect LEDs will reach that level very soon (written in 2009).

I'm using hydroponics fertilizer, with nitrogen mostly in nitrate form. When i feed them (from time to time) they grow fast, when there is light they grow thicker, and twice fast. Scops are good in ALL respects. (dont worry, be happy:) Like T. bridgesii, but without spines.

Maybe to cut scop's top and reroot it? But it is better to do in warm time of the year. Then it would be shorter but thicker. They grow fast when are fed with fertilizer and have sufficient light to grow.

Scopulicola can be glaucous. It can be glaucous and can be not glaucous, it depends on its age and growing conditions. But your plant can be Juuls's Giant.

I'v read other forums on how they treat those root mealys and about their successes. The key is (the same as you stated) without insecticide it is not probable to cope succesfuly with mealybugs (except for incineration of plants).

Then Imidacloprid will do the trick on them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid Uses The most widely used applications for imidacloprid in California are pest control in structures, turf pest control, grape growing, and head and leaf lettuce growing. Other widespread crop uses are rice, grains/cereals including corn (maize), potatoes, vegetables, sugar beets, fruit, cotton, and hops. Target insects include sucking insects (e.g., aphids, whiteflies, leafhoppers and planthoppers, thrips, scales, mealybugs, bugs, psyllids, and phylloxera), beetles (e.g., longhorn beetles, leaf beetles, Colorado potato beetles, rice water-weevils, wireworms, grubs, and flea beetles), and others (e.g., lepidopterous leafminers, some diptera, termites, locusts, and fleas). As an insecticide spray, it is used on a wide variety of agricultural crops, ornamentals, and turf. It is also marketed for termite control, for flea control on pets, and for household cockroach control. There are a whole lot of insecticides http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insecticide imidacloprid is a nicotinoide (acts like nicotine), longer lasting, systemic, and has about the same toxicity. Pyrethroids (like Permethrin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin) also can be effective, but more bugs have resistence to them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrethroid Bedbugs have been a problem for humans since biblical times. Up until the 1950s, they were almost completely wiped out due to the use of DDT. After DDT was banned, pyrethroids became more commonly used against bed bugs; as a result, as of 2010 a super strain of bedbugs has evolved nerve cell mutations impervious to pyrethroids. This has caused a bed bug pandemic due to ineffective treatment methods.

looks like fungus. If it is than it is better to use fungicide. I used Fludioxonil (brand name Maxim) for cacties (small seedlings), seems it does not affect their growth. But it seems a bug. http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/MealyBugs Some people just recommend tossing the plant and the soil as well if you have root mealies. Various treatments have been tried with only short-term help but imidacloprid, a treatment that many people recommend for sucking and crawling insects, has been used very successfully. It works as a contact and a systemic and lasts from 6 to 9 months. It is sold under the name Marathon in the United States and Provado in the U.K. For over the counter this is the active ingredient in Bayer's Tree & Shrub Insect Control. The recommended rate is 2 to 3 oz. to a gal. of water dilution for that product. This product can be used for mealy bugs found in the leaves or neck of the bulbs too. (See next paragraph.) But it is recommended that it be alternated with other products so that mealy bugs will not become resistant with repeated us. but seems phosphororganics is better http://cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=121136&sid=ae8dbb743c1caa1fcc5305b27f5bc8b3 Malathion has a much broader kill spectrum than Inidacloprid. Imidacloprid is strictly insects, and definitely not spider mites. Malathion kills spider mites but its been around long enough that many of them are resistant to it. Malathion also kills headlice so spray your kids too