saguaro

edit: i'm opting out of this convo lol

here's another cracker: "the lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of Understanding"

this is giving me asthma

does anyone know what causes lophs to have this webbed pattern?

I don't know the intentions of mother nature. That aside, I've kept plenty of hard-grown and grafted lophs over the years and I've only had a couple look like this. One hard-grown loph gave off pups and new growth with a very similar look after it recovered from a snail attack. I suspected the snail was a vector for horizontal gene transfer, the same process by which TPQC apparently came to be. I have taken on board your suggestion is that it looks like this because it has been grafted. It could be the case, but it is still an anomaly.

Hey mate, damping is caused by fungus so reducing moisture and increasing air exchange will help. You could try using a soilless or sterilised media to germinate in. Cleaning organic matter and spores from your propagating gear will help, as will lowering sowing rates. I'm curious if you know the pH of your bore water, rainwater is usually around 5.5 which is optimum for seedling growth but your bore water could be higher, which would favour fungal growth.

seems like this trait is more common in bridgesii than pachs and perus

hey mate, lophs go red like that from sunburn. That one is still quite small, did you recently transfer it from the seedling tray to direct sun? They require hardening off from the humid seedling stage and gradually being introduced to harsher conditions. I'd generally go for a higher mineral content in the substrate, but that mix should work. When you say 1 part cactus soil, do you mean the stuff you buy at bunnings? I would advise against buying any soil from bunnings in general, there is better value elsewhere and bunnings ones are heavy on the composted pine cause it's cheap but you end up with poor quality acidic soil, they're usually infested with fungus gnats too. Lophs would like a substrate that's slightly on the alkaline side. If it was me I would sprinkle some gypsum around the loph to slowly be watered in over time. Or I'd put some in the container that you bottom water with. Most likely more experienced growers will offer better advice, but if it was me, I would give it more shade until it's bigger and hardened off to the sun. In nature they are commonly shaded under trees or in crevices. I personally wouldn't transplant it to new substrate because I think it damages the root, affecting growth rate and exposing it to diseases. I reckon it will be fine though

seconded, its a clean & healthy culture. will post the results if I get it to work

There was a 'CSD' cutting on ebay the other day, it pops up there from time to time. I'm not very experienced at ID'ing but this recent listing didn't look like other pics of this clone I've seen

I'm thinking about building a wheelie bin worm farm, anyone got one or ever built one? It's basically a bin with a tap, false bottom, holes for aeration and a porthole for easy collection of castings. You can buy them for >$400, but I'm more inclined to repurpose a clean, second hand bin if I can.

cheers, that is very helpful

yeah, thats a pup looking good!

Thanks lindsay, this is awesome stuff @Darklight This is the cheapest one i've seen so far, $98 for 250g 'Peptone, Bacteriological LR (non-animal origin)'. They also have 100g for $67. https://www.bacto.com.au/shop/index.php?route=product/product&keyword=peptone&category_id=0&description=1&model=1&product_id=9871 I was gonna buy some to try growing the cordy too, wanna split that with me Darklight?

would love one !

I've heard good things about the SAB and australian tricho facebook pages for finding cacti, that's probably your best bet. other than that you can occasionally see trichos on gumtree and ebay

if i had to guess, i think it's a young Fomes sp. but it's hard to tell while it's this young.

X

unfortunately not, I don't grow them but I would like to. I tried to track down seed a while ago but couldn't find any vendors in aus

Ariocarpus, Aztekium and Astrophytum are all pretty cool imo. can be grafted to pere and trichos too

organic in the sense of carbon-based molecules means something different from organic farming though e.g. glyphosate is an organic compound, but its use its not permitted on certified organic farms. edit: if used at too high a concentration, or wrong pH on certain plants it can damage or kill them. but the same is true for natural stuff e.g. some cacti can die even with nitrogen rich natural soils like manure. I try to garden with as few external inputs as possible. for hungry plants like veggies etc I prefer using worm castings, mycorrhizae (actively aerated compost tea) and compost from food scraps etc but that's just my personal preference. tassiescott's soil mix sounds great

Hey Calaverite, I have never heard of this plant before now Can you please tell what its used for and why you want it so much?

These are popping up around this time. I was walking with a German friend and he was keen to try them, convinced they would be similar to a European parasol. I said that although I've read about people eating them, they're not officially listed as edible. We didn't eat em in the end Being similar to M. procera, if accidental acute poisonings were possible you'd think it would be well documented by now. My main concern with this mushroom is the unknown concentration of mycotoxins such as agaritine. What's the verdict, are these good to eat? Also, does anyone know how a mushroom species becomes 'officially' regarded as edible?

PM me if you're still searching I will send you some