frigidii bridgesii

[Auxin]

After a couple years of trying to cheat on trichs to get faster growth by growing indoors, and only ending up with shitty growth, I finally decided to start growing them properly even if it will reduce their active growing season to 4 months a year. But I'm not stopping there. I wanna grow the buggers outdoors 12 months a year! The problem? Every winter gets down to -15°C during the coldest nights and some winters can get as low as -18°C! The one time I left a pach out through the coldest month it died at -15°C while fully dormant (but had survived -11° nights).

Enter the frigidii crusade!

I've heard bridgesii is a little more cold hardy than pachanoi and its more historically significant than terscheckii so I'll be working with bridgesii.

The plan is to plant the seeds, grow them indoors as seedlings through winter (now), transplant 45 of the seedlings to pots, grow outdoors through summer probably under shade cloth, put them into dormancy at the beginning of september and place them in a mini greenhouse (to protect from wind and frost) in a small open ended shading greenhouse outdoors for the winter. December and january are when the temps can drop below -15°C, hopefully fewer than 40 plants will freeze to death. In febuary if the survivors are getting too thirsty I can bring them to a cool spot indoors to break dormancy enough to rehydrate them. Thats the first 14 months, after that is subject to change depending on how many (if any) survive. Ideally I'd take the survivors, grow them some, clone them, and leave all outside for a second winter.. since they survived a winter as seedlings already they should handle it better as older plants but in some of the clone pairs at least one of the two may freeze... I'd kill both of that clonal line and continue growing just those where both clones survived, working for several years to find the few plants out of the original 45 that can repeatedly survive winters going down even to -18°C.

I'm new to bridgesii tho, so a few questions. I figure I can give them lots of moisture and some 1/8 grow ferts as seedlings and in that first year after transplanting from trays to pots water them as soon as the soil dries out. Doing that can bridgesii grow big enough in 8 months to survive 6 months in cold dormancy without dieing of dehydration? Can they grow enough in 8 months to be sturdy enough for what I plan? And is there anything special I can do to pump as much growth out of them as possible in the 8 months after seed sprouting? I'm hoping to get them big enough to get past seedling cold hypersensitivity that could force me to wait until the second winter before leaving them out through the two coldest months. I can be patient, but only within limits

I'm in an arid USDA zone 7a, eastern washington scrubland. Humidity isnt very high even in winter.. december is the wettest month with just under 3 cm of precipitation

Thoughts?

Edited December 13, 2008 by Auxin

[kadakuda]

i would think eastern washington would be ok. but it does get cold there! whenever i traveled there i thought it would be great cactus country if it wasnt for the winter (at least opuntia grow there).

i see one problem though. you want as huge a plant as possible in 8 months....that's doable but you are making them much weaker and easier to rot (bloated). slower grown cacti are generally hardier. so in 8 months i think your pushing it. 8 months you may get 6 inches or so, perhaps a little bigger. one suggestion would be to grow them beside a sunny side of the house that is covered. this way it is a couple degrees warmer cause the house insulates a little bit anyway. i grew some (cereus for example) outside year round like this on vancouver island and they did fine, but its colder where you are for sure.

may also want more than 45 good luck with it, its a worth while venture that will probably work out if your a little lucky. but i think skipping this year and letting them grow through to next year may be a safer bet.

[Undergrounder]

It's a pity they take so long to reach a flowering age, you would ideally want to line-breed the survivors and over successive winters build a super cold-tolerant clone that way. The cold-resisting genetics would be more concentrated in successive generations.

If you're just cloning them, perhaps you can deliberately subject the small seedlings to lower temperatures and weed out the cold-hardy ones that way, save waiting an extra year or two to test them as adults. I would imagine a seedlings that survives a couple of weeks in a coolish artificial environment would be the same ones that survive a cold winter outdoors as adults, no?

[Auxin]

Damn, I was afraid someone would bring me back down to earth

Kadas almost certainly right about not wanting it to get bloated from trying to force growth. Really I'd be happy if they were 3" tall and not skinny after 8 months from seed germination. But I was also hoping they would somehow give a signal that they could be hit with full winter the first year because in the first year I could have three plants in each square 3.5" pot and fit 45 to 60 plants in the mini-greenhouse. If a reasonable growth rate is achieved tho, each plant would need its own 3.5" pot for the second years growth I expect, and thatd be a lot of pots! But I guess I could work out a housing solution. Another reason I'm hesitant to wait til the second winter is by then there would be a huge investment of effort combined with the chance of every cactus dieing.

Alternately perhaps I could let the first year cacti get exposed to incrementally lower temps until about half to 2/3 die, then bring them inside and in the second year leave them out the whole time. Sort of like Undergrounder suggests

This might end up a pretty big project, bigger than I first imagined

Breeding them sure would be interesting but the F1's wouldnt show much variation.. it'd be the F2's that might have super cold tolerant ones... that takes it up to 15 or 20 years

Edited December 13, 2008 by Auxin

[Pisgah]

Plant hundreds of seeds (thousands maybe). Cold frame the seedlings. Let some die. Run them in the cold frame a couple of years, then try planting SOME of them out. I'm 6b, with a microclimate near my house that may actually push me into a 7. My large cacti are doing fine in a cold frame, planted in a raised bed. I did lose many seedlings in pots, though, and will run a very low energy marine block heater in Jan and Feb (coldest months here).

I have a hunch the bridgesii are not going to be hardy enough, but select some of your cold hardiest and try to get them to flower. I'll swap you some pollen from my cold hardiest bridges when they bloom.

On a side note, I'm starting to look at Bridgesii x Tershekii, and vice versa as a way to get a cold hardier plant. And FWIW, I and one other person have had remarkable experiences noting the cold hardiness of Eileen.

Good luck!

[Auxin]

I hadnt really thought far enough ahead to think about planting in the ground, I dont have the balls to do that with any more than a clone of a plant

Its a deal on the pollen trade but that might be in 2016

I had thought about interspecific hybrids too, I considered doing this with the LC001 and LC002 pach/bridge hybrid lines which I have some of but I figure hand pollinated F1 hybrids wont show the variability needed in such an endeavor, thats why I opted for store bought open pollinated bridge seeds that likely came from multiple plants. Your idea of bridgesii x tershekii would almost certainly be more cold hardy by default but again, great variability prolly wouldnt manifest until you got those ones to breed with eachother or backcrossed and you grew the F2 seeds (thats also where alkaloid levels would be more selectable... if you lived in peru or something)

[mutant]

What about using a more cold hardy stock, like cereus, and graft?

[Pisgah]

IME cereus is less cold hardy. The cold hardiest ones that I've found are Tersheckii, Macrogonus, Peruvianus var. Tarmaensis and Armatocereus godingianus. (I have yet to grow pasacana, which would probably be very hardy as well.)

That is of the upright, SA cacti of course. there are globulars and opuntioids that are WAY cold hardier, but that should go without saying.

[Auxin]

I didnt know macrogonus was more cold hardy than pachanoi, since its so often called peruvianus and peruvianus is usually noted as being less hardy I kinda ruled it out without thinking Very interesting.

Anyway, I individually planted 108 bridgesii seeds yesterday, so thats the direction I'm gonna go for now

And yeah it looks like it'd be pretty hard to graft a trich onto a Escobaria or Pediocactus but you never know, cacti are a diverse and adaptable lot.

[kadakuda]

good start man!!!

Pisgah, anymore info on why you find cereus (what specie) less cold hardy? when in canada my cp did far better than the trichs i had (pach/peruv/bridg). in fact they grew outdoors year round (covered from rain) quite well. down to -10C for brief periods (couple days).

auxin. maybe check nurseries for cacti they grow outside year round. i know in osoyoos there is a nursery with some cacti they have outdoors, not sure how far away that is from you. but im sure there are some near you.

[Pisgah]

Pisgah, anymore info on why you find cereus (what specie) less cold hardy? when in canada my cp did far better than the trichs i had (pach/peruv/bridg). in fact they grew outdoors year round (covered from rain) quite well. down to -10C for brief periods (couple days).

It was a cereus peruvianus. I think it was a problem with root moisture. The trichs I listed seemed more tolerant of the root moisture in the cold.

[planthelper]

i realy like this topic a lot, because i can indentify so much with the aim to push this "invisible barrier" of what will survive a winter in your given location and what not.

i pushed this matter regardless of which climat zone i'm in, if i live in the semi tropics and most gardens there have mango trees, than i go for coco palms.

and if i live in south england, i go for punica granatum and musa ensete, and in austria (very cold) i grew kiwi fruit.

taking full advantage of the microclimat, makes a big difference in places where it might go down to -8 deg c or a bit more once in a while, but not in places where it goes down to -25 deh c every few years.

if it only frosts mildly, once in a while at your location, than it's very usefull to have a good look around after some frost and to check out what and how some frost tender plants have survived. the rule is that, you will not get the frost on top of the hill and neither in sheltered aspects (the downhill side of the house, or some trees and so on).

another thing is to look for spots which get heated up by buildings, like green areas on top of underground parking places and similar. if i could, i would have always loved to use (bath) waste water to run through an area which would provide bottom heat for an outdoor or glasshouse area.

anyway, i checked my lowest recorded temperature and it's -8 deg c so next year i will leave some of my bridgesii outdoors. south america watch out, cold climat outdoors cacti growers will flood the market with there produce, haha.

and if teotz posts thought me one thing or the other, than it's time for me to produce the "super pedro strain ice king" reg trade mark.

[mutant]

Very very interesting thread, and post by planthelper and everyone, even if I live in a pretty ideal place for cacti growing.. haven't seen snow in my town for years... My plants for next season include planting lopho-myrti grafts , t.bridge , t.pachanoi, t.peru etc etc in soil, among other things... I am also very inclined to do the same thing with my pere-lopho / pere-tricho grafts...

Nice 'microclimates' with heat sources for winter would be fireplaces/burners chimneys or boilers f.e.

[Inyan]

You could always opt for somaclonal variation / hybridization. Adjusting the temperature slowly so as to select the most cold hardy cells and then grow those up. Its a bit faster than line breeding.

[Auxin]

Well theres two reasons I didnt consider cell culture, firstly all my culture experience is limited to E coli on agar and yeast in sugary solutions huge learning curve.

Secondly, and more critical, it is entirely likely that the hardiness of cells suspended in nutrient broth or embedded in agar would in no way directly reflect the hardiness of the resultant plants in real world conditions. The reason for this is that the hardiness of whole plants is based around the physiological conditions they achieve when dormant and a bit thirsty, ie. how they manage the 'cactus antifreeze' in dormancy. This, I believe, would not be the same as cold hardiness of pampered non-dormant cells with ample or over-ample water... so if you were to do it you'd still have to do a massive growout in the end to further select for those which are hardy in dormancy. The end result might be better but it'd be a huge investment in effort and my lab isnt equipped anyway, lol.

Good thought tho

If you want to get creative heres an idea. As far as I know the 'cactus antifreeze' is based on the mucilaginous constituents. Aqueous solutions of mucilaginous compounds change the speed of sound through the solution based on concentration. So the hypothesis seems obvious. Grow 5000 seedlings and when they are 3 cm tall put them into partial dormancy and one by one put them into a sound proof chamber where they are blasted with a precision sound burst and the length of the microseconds long delay in sound transmittance from the seedling is recorded and the 100 plants that respond as if they have an abnormally high mucilaginous character are saved and grown out Quick and easy gooey slimy cactus.

If anyone does that I want my name in the research paper and a few cuttings

[Inyan]

Don't over estimate that learning curve of yours Auxin. I thought the same thing once. Take the knowledge you have and expound on it if that is your desire. I do like your idea of growing out your F1 lines and then crossing your F1's to each other, back to each parent, etc. as well. Heck, you could even outcross a few of them if variability is something you seek. I'd personally like to see more variability in flowering as well which could be obtained utilizing some of the nice Trichopsis or Echinopsis hybrids out there. Something to think about at any rate and it certainly couldn't hurt to add some color into your flowers. Sure, it might set some other goals back a bit, but who said you can't have more than one goal at a time?

[kakti]

FWIW -7 C killed my entire collection except for one Terschekii in an unheated greenhouse. Pachanois, Peruvinaus, Bridgesii, all of em.

Eileen is extremely cold tolerant however, surviving over 20 days in a mailbox in below freezing temperatures.

[Auxin]

Yipe >.

How long had it been since you had watered them? That seems to be a big determining factor in hardiness.

I've admittedly slacked off on my cacti in the years leading up to now but I always made sure I didnt water any pachanois outdoors after sept 1 and always brought them in when the nights began hitting -6 or -7° C (except for one cactus) they usually hit that temp at the start of december and I never had a single scar or dead tip so far.

I've heard of eileens hardiness and thats what I'm basically trying to do, intentionally breed another like it from totally seperate blood lines. The more genetically distinct cold hardy cacti in the world the better

I hope you kept that terscheckii

[kakti]

Not sure exactly, but it was at least 3 months of no water when that happened.

[kadakuda]

thats harsh!

my mom just phoned me and said it got to -18 the other night and they have 4 feet of snow (right beside WA border on the coast)....i am having some doubts about them surviving that.

[mutant]

-7 C killed my entire collection except for one Terschekii in an unheated greenhouse. Pachanois, Peruvinaus, Bridgesii, all of em.

sorry to hear!! they were in ground or in pots? is it this very same photo you put of the plants that died??

boy, -18... what the fuck is this??? It's quite a project to grow cacti outside with these temps.. hardline cactus growing... why not send them over here, donation for our cactus garden, where we don't get any minus temps???

An eileen would be very very appreciated!

[Auxin]

Well its not unthinkable for cacti to survive down to -18, I have one species which can survive down to -32°C and I'm going to grow a few others good to below -20 (local natives). The problem is finding religiously significant entheologically historical cacti that can do it

I think too many people are intimidated by the couple years it takes to grow trichs up from seed, cacti are a really adaptable lot. If lots of people started pushing the limits in 50 years there would probably be trichs growing in gardens in siberia.

And yes I did send some to Oz, I sent over the -32° cactus to melbourne because irony amuses me

If you guys ever get 9 feet of snow at least one plant species will survive

[kadakuda]

yes, and that's on the coast where it is usually warmer than eastern WA.

its a good experiment, but more might be needed i grew cereus peruvianus in those temps no problem, i know htey are generally much hardier than trichs but still there is hope like you say over the mountains, are the winters wet like the coast? that would be my main worry more than cold is the wet + cold.

[Auxin]

My winters are the wettest time of the year but thats not saying much, december is wettest with just under 3 cm rainfall, november and january have 2.7 cm. On the coast seattle gets 15.4 cm rain in december.

After the winter rains my area looks basically like this:

[kadakuda]

ahh i see, we used to go snake hunting (well, photo hunting) around those parts. but i think the frost would hit pretty hard. you got many opuntias? i seem to remember there were plentiful locations of O. fragilis (fuggers always get stuck to shoes!)