What did you do to your cacti today?

[naja naja]

thats sunburn dreamtimebliss

[watertrade]

WT that is one awesome looking loph. Is the monstrose tendencies due to insect damage or disease ?

about the same time, sometime in winter lots of my plants had a surface rot, kind of thing, like orange rot but not quite the same where water was sitting in the deep ribs of the lophs (watering in winter tsk tsk ) when the plants grow out they stayed restricted in this area forming a kind collar. growth continues as normal after this point.

[OPP]

Recently repotted my cactii into bigger pots thinking that they were slow growing due to root boundness. A few days later bought Trouts notes which say big pots promote root growth not vertical growth.

Should I repot these guys/girls into smaller pots?

[mushroomman]

They should be ok man, once the roots fill those pots they should really take off

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

Came home to find the "sideways rain" had saturated everything for the 3rd day in a row! I set them up where I did to eliminate this but Mother Nature is hurting me this yr lol! I've noticed one starting to how black rot, will need to keep on checking in the next week!

[J Smith]

Changed some 2 year old seedlings from sleeping 4 to a bed to sleeping 2 to a bed. Nearly all fields pach x psycho0 with a few juuls x scop thrown in for good measure. Seeds from pd I think.

[Snowfella]

Just some limited weeding in the new bed, plus squaled like a little schoolgirl when I found the first new pups from my poor little brigesii.

PC pach keeps motoring along like I never took it out of the ground in the firstplace. It's first pup was just a twinkle in it's eye a month or so back.

And my terscheckii is getting outdone by a Mammillaria for girth in the older bed.

[bogfrog]

^

Good idea, bit of competition to keep tershi on it's toes

[Ethos]

Repotted these three and took pictures of them

[Optimystic]

@ Snowfella

That middle one doesn't look like PC Pach from the states
is that the Pc Pach in aussie? Looks more like a regular pach
I guess it could be PC for there... here I would automatically assume its seed grown or just any other clone
Our PC Clone only rarely has the dash above the aeroles
and also the spineage looks way different.. and i've seen them grown in alot of varying conditions

[Snowfella]

Could really be anything mate, I just haven't invested enough energy into finding out what clone it might be. All I know is that it came courtesy of Hamiltons so it's likely common.

Edit: going through old photos of my 2011 holiday back home I couldn't help but start drooling again. Was heartbreaking having to leave this old girl and get on a flight back downunder again. Right most in this photo.

Tip

Mum swore it was well in excess of 30 years old, dating back to my dad's university days, and since then hadn't seen a single repot and only quarterly light waterings. Judging by what I found in the pot I don't doubt her, soil was like concrete. Had a tought time getting it out of the pot, you just don't break a 30+ year old cheramic pot that once belonged to your now dead grandmother! Took me hours gently chipping away at the "soil" to get the rootball free and yet another few hours to get the roots exposed.

Edited February 25, 2013 by Snowfella

[mutant]

hey snowF, I agree that the 'pc' looks like the a 'true' pachanoi form, reminding me of kk339 I got from australia

and on the mammi VS terscheckii,

I am betting that if you leave them wherethey are, in 2 years from now the teschecki will be spining the mammi, In the end the mammi might establish in the base of the terscheckii or it will die from spining. You could prune the spines at the side of the mammi to try and prevent that..

also the pilosocereus azuereus, the blue one, it could easily flower if you put in the ground. I had a smaller one flower the year it was planted in the ground. beautiful flower.

on freeing rootbound rootballs from the pot, spraying with pressure water does the trick the easiest way. When you can't even put it out of the pot, you can try and shoot water from above to remove the upper soil, making it easier to remove the rest.

Worst case is when the pot is from clay and also spherical, then it's more difficult to get out. Shooting with water works wonders though, especially if the soil is worn out and you dont care if you loose it.

[CβL]

I'm so sick of digging (for now, perhaps forever). I've been digging my garden so that it's a not just good soil in the bottom corner - but good soil to a depth of about half a metre everywhere - and it's just going painfully slow, digging out lumps of clay, bashing them full-force with the back of the spade, and digging it back into the pile of loose soil.

I've been digging so much that it's started entering my dreams. I'll be imagining something else while drifting to sleep (like playing guitar), and all of a sudden - I'll feel the jolt of the spade meeting hard ground - running up my arm - I'll actually jerk in real-life, and be awake again. Now that I don't have any more days off - it's going to mean a lot more digging at odd hours too. :|

[mutant]

Actually I got 3 good suggestions regarding digging:

1st

if you insist on doing it all yrself, don't smoke beforehand. Smoke afterwards. Lots of it. I wont help your revitalisation the next day, especially if you're already tired, but you probably wont dream about digging or even remember dreaming at all.

2nd get a poorer but better fit friend of yours to do it and pay him do it, drinking beer and watching [resting from the other day's labour]. With my country under severe economic stress we have to distribute the wealth around.

the 3rd is even better and I have put this to practive a couple times:

get an excercise gym-freek friend of yours to help. Get him to do the all the digging and if you are a good saleman, you might get him to pay you, cause y'know digging is top notch excercise. In any case you give him instructions from under the shed drinking your beer and smoking.

While working he can hjave a beer or two but he smokes after he finishes the job. If you let him smoke he probably wont finish the job and/or wont be digging as deep [half meter, man wow]

oh ok, I just thought up of another one, but its probably illegal in oz.

Get a speed freek / gym freek / excercise friend of yours, give him 15 mg of MDPV per os [even though ephedrine might be better if legal] and let him help. This way he will finish earlier, he will dig deeper and you might even let him have a smoke while working

PS going to the gh

Edited February 27, 2013 by mutant

[mutant]

lol many people have experience this with the sleep.

I remember waking up as I have moved IRL from some vision of the dream. It was either I was playing tennis and I had to hit a coming ball or something falling over me from the tree and I had to move suddenly to avoid.

Its funny. I played ojnly a bit tennis when I was very young. VERY young, some 20 years ago?

[2meke]

hey CBL have you heard how good gypsum is for breaking up clay? GIB board is just gypsum, heaps of off cuts at building sites. might be worth digging some into the bottom of your garden and it will penetrate and loosen the clay below for ya. plants will probably like it too.

[CβL]

Good ideas mutant... except that I am the poorer but better fit friend of all my other friends, hahaha.

I think I have heard that now that you mention it. But I still would have to dig it up, to have an even layer of pumice and compost everywhere. I think I'll just have to keep digging, and eating lots of protein so that I'm fully healed each day.

Alternatively I could borrow my brother's meat grinder and grind the clay up that way

Edited February 27, 2013 by CβL

[2meke]

yea man for sure. i just mean when you get down to the depth you want some gypsum in the bottom will keep penetrating the clay even further down.

can't wait to see it man!

[endorfinder]

Garden gypsum is cheap (virtually free if in an agricultural area as I am) - bugger smashing gyprock to break clay!!

[Snowfella]

Went out to Hamiltons and added another 7 plants to the collection, had some gaps on the benches that "needed" to be filled

Noticed they had some new pach crests and some foot long brigesii for sale, ranging from $20 for a small crest to $100 for a near 2 foot pach with cresting tip!

Edited February 28, 2013 by Snowfella

[Nemisty]

I agree with 2meke on the gypsum. I used to apply it liberally at my old house where the clay was like a horizontal brick wall hiding under 10cm of topsoil. It should continue to weaken the clay for a little while after its application too.

[CβL]

Aiight - I will invest in some gypsum then.

[zelly]

Personally I disagree with the gypsum idea for your cactus garden. Although it may break down clay soils, I dont think the worms particularly enjoy eating it.

Hands down, the very best thing you can do to your soil is work in copious amounts of preferably green organic matter and let it decompose in the soil.

My cactus patch started out as 10 types of grass, 15 varieties of weeds, and hard pan clay soil. The very first thing I did was spade the grass & weeds under. As they decomposed, I planted Ornamental Indian corn. When the corn matured, I folded the stalks over, chopped them up with the shovel, and spaded them under. Every bit of vegetative waste my ward produces gets spaded in, even if it means digging a hole, dumping the organic matter in & covering with a layer of dirt.

Before

After

Before

During

After

Dont expect results overnight or even next year. The more green organic matter you work into the soil, the more friable it becomes. The first time I turned the soil, there were no worms to be found anywhere. Now the soil is alive with them. Organic matter decomposes best in damp or wet soil.

As you can see I still have clay soil, but now I dont have to jump up & down on the shovel, it penetrates the soil to the depth of the blade just pushing on the handle or one foot on the shovel blade.

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

This morning I charged some Agnihotra ash in a copper bowl for 1hr in the sun. I then combined this to some organic fert pellets that I let break down over the weekend in a pale of water and gave the trichs a drink. Possibly the last bit of goodness for this season if the sun doesn't stay out this week.

[mutant]

nice post zelly , thanks for sharing