katu Posted April 20, 2014 Thanks for that Bryce, another rabbit hole for me to follow . Hey Ethnoguy cheers mate. Regarding lime, I do add it to my Mexican miniatures but not my Trichocereus.sp , should I be? Regarding soil temps I used to employ the double pot method for my Trichs but have gotten a bit lazy nowadays . I've gotta mate that puts a row of pots full of gravel as the front row facing the sun and double pots all his Trichocereus.sp. But yeah, what can I say i'm a lazy man... Ideally I guess you want them in the ground but we don't all have that luxury, with the rain fall I get they'd rot just at the thought of it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
EthnoGuy85 Posted April 21, 2014 I add a small amount of dolomitic lime to my mix before potting and then early in the growing season every year I add about a one third/half cup per 8 inches of pot size. I also cannot plant in ground but I use pea gravel as a mulch and use terracotta pots and it seems to help keep the roots a bit cool. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
EthnoGuy85 Posted May 14, 2014 Been foliar feeding my Trichocereus for a few weeks now and WoW the glaucusness has gotten intense. I'm still continuinga regular feeding program just spray once a week between midnight and 2 a.m. With a 1/4th strength 20-20-20 water soluble fertilizer. I'm thinking of experimenting with a couple unrooted cuts as well. Two cuts from the same clone unrooted. Think I'll spray one once a week and leave the other alone and see if it'll lessen rooting time or not. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hookahhead Posted May 15, 2014 Not sure how much rain or how exposed your plants are, but wanted to add a friendly reminder...If they are not getting a good rinse from mother nature, be sure to hit them with plain water every so often to prevent salt accumulation/build up. Remember, they can't abscise their leaves under stress, like most other green things do. Because they typically don't have any to shed 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AndyAmine. Posted May 15, 2014 I have used foliar feeds on unrooted cutting that were very dehydrated .Im quite positive it made a noticeable difference, 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
EthnoGuy85 Posted May 15, 2014 (edited) @ hookahhead- we're getting rains at least once a week if not more in my area. So I usually time my foliar feeds a day before the rains so they get a good wash down @ andyamine- both the cuts I'll be playing with are pretty dehydrated atm first spray was two days ago. I'm pretty sure it's already starting to fatten back up. My only thing is if it's getting moisture back into it then it may actually slow down the need to throw roots Edited May 15, 2014 by EthnoGuy85 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hookahhead Posted May 15, 2014 (edited) @ andyamine- both the cuts I'll be playing with are pretty dehydrated atm first spray was two days ago. I'm pretty sure it's already starting to fatten back up. My only thing is if it's getting moisture back into it then it may actually slow down the need to throw roots Although a plant requires water for photosynthesis, roots do more than suck up moisture. The plant relies on the uptake-transpiration process to move nutrients and wastes around. Even a fully hydrated plant needs roots, so I wouldn't worry about this too much. Been foliar feeding my Trichocereus for a few weeks now and WoW the glaucusness has gotten intense. I'm still continuinga regular feeding program just spray once a week between midnight and 2 a.m. With a 1/4th strength 20-20-20 water soluble fertilizer. I'm thinking of experimenting with a couple unrooted cuts as well. Two cuts from the same clone unrooted. Think I'll spray one once a week and leave the other alone and see if it'll lessen rooting time or not. Although many cactophile find the glaucous look attractive, it doesn't necessarily convey a happy/healthy plant. If you consider that it's due to a buildup of wax that protects the plant from UV damage and desiccation, it seems a bit counterintuitive that foliar feeding would increase this effect. Admittedly, this is purely speculation, but I think more glacous plant, would benefit less from foliar feeding. I would be interested to see the side by side myself, and encourage you to test it! SURFICIAL INJURIES OF SEVERAL CACTI OF SOUTH AMERICA.pdf Analyses of several species of long-lived columnar cacti in Argentina and Chile show that an accumulation of epicuticular waxes is occurring on many species and that these accumulations obscure stomata. This accumulation leads to visible surficial maladies such as scaling and barking on crests and troughs of ribs similar to those that occur on saguaros, [/size]Carnegiea gigantea (giant saguaro) of North America, which results in premature death of individual saguaros. Scaling is the appearance of tan to red-orange discoloration of surfaces. Barking refers to a larger buildup of materials on the surfaces than scaling that appears dark brown to black. Equatorial facing surfaces showed more injuries on stems of [/size]Trichocereus pasacana and [/size]T. terscheckii in Argentina, and [/size]Echinopsis chilensis and [/size]E. scotsbergii in Chile, than on polar surfaces. Crest barking was as much as five times greater on equatorial-facing sides compared with polar-facing sides. Spine retention was up to three times greater on equatorial- vs polar-facing sides. the two troughs of a crest were evaluated separately. Results show that injury to one trough of a crest facing the equator was as much as twice that of the second trough facing the south pole. These results show that surficial injuries were greater on equatorial than on polar surfaces, and are related to total incident irradiance on these surfaces.[/size] Stem surface injuries of several species of columnar cacti of Ecuador.pdf Previous research has shown that identical scale and bark injuries occur on stems of 16 species of columnar cacti in North and South America. For all 16 species, areas with scale and bark injuries on stems were greater on equatorial-facing surfaces than on polar-facing surfaces. Moreover, percentages of stem areas with injuries were well correlated with relative amounts of annual sunlight exposure. Cacti with high levels of scale and bark injuries had high levels of mortality. Previous data have shown that at the Equator, about 1.4 times more incident light occurs on west-facing and east-facing surfaces (equatorial surfaces) than on north-facing and south-facing (polar-facing) surfaces. Herein we determined the percentages of stem areas with scale and bark injuries on equatorial-facing (east and west) and polarfacing (north and south) surfaces of four species of columnar cacti in Ecuador (near the Equator). Specifically, percentages of trough areas with scale and bark injuries were determined for stems of Armatocereus cartwrightianus, Pilosocereus lanuginosus, and Praecereus euchlorus on mainland Ecuador and for Jasminocereus thousarii on the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. For our analysis, data from all four cactus species were pooled. Chi-square tests showed that average injuries on equatorial surfaces were greater than average injuries on polar surfaces. For the pooled data, injuries on equatorial-facing surfaces were 1.4 times greater than on polar-facing surfaces. Therefore, the 1.4 times greater injuries on equatorial-facing surfaces compared with polar-facing surfaces was coincident with the 1.4 times greater incident light on equatorial surfaces than on polar surfaces for cacti at the Equator. Taken together with previous data, the data of this study show that at least 20 species of long-lived columnar cactus species in the Americas have almost identical scale and bark injuries even though they exist from 32° N to 32° S. Ratios of equatorial vs. polar injuries are well correlated with ratios of PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) for equatorial and polar surfaces. Moreover, the ratio of injuries on equatorial vs. polar surfaces were highly correlated with the latitudes of this study. SURFICIAL INJURIES OF SEVERAL CACTI OF SOUTH AMERICA.pdf SURFICIAL INJURIES OF SEVERAL CACTI OF SOUTH AMERICA.pdf Edited May 15, 2014 by hookahhead Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
