Planning an outdoor cactus garden

[Berengar]

I've finally decided to start growing a few plants in the ground, and I'm looking for some suggestions and advice.

I've always thought that my climate is not suitable for most cacti, although people often have various Opuntia and Aloe planted outside in my town. It's not really cold, but it's very wet. On most maps it's just lumped in in 'zone 8', but according to some other maps and USDA definitions it's somewhere between 9a and 9b. Below is a chart with average temperatures and rainfall. This year has been somewhat colder, there were a few days with sub zero temperatures © for an hour or two in the early morning.

Do I stand any chance? Is anyone growing cacti in similar conditions? Any advice on what I can do to minimize my losses? I plan to grow several Opuntia species, Aloe, Agave, Lobivia ferox, Echinopsis leucantha and various Trichocereus species/hybrids.

I'll keep this thread as a sort of growlog, and update it with pictures when I start working. For now, all advice is welcome!

[MrDoRight]

In natural environment of certain opuntias get rained and snowed on during they're dormant seasons and appear to live quite comftorable.

I Live in zone 8b and have had opuntias outdoors in the snow and survive fine, but trichos appear differently because I've lost a few unrooted sections.

I beleive the PC pachanoi are more hardy than the rest so I'm going to expirement by planting it on a shady slope where the water runs down.

I think only some agave species are hardy because I seen one at the nursery that looked dead and it doesn't even get as cold at the nursery as it does by my house. The one I've got remained fine outdoors all winter. I would expirement and live through the expirences.

Good luck

[Gunter]

Some trichocereus should do okay, but not all. It is worth planting several and seeing how it goes. A raised bed that drains well will help.

[Getafix]

Not sure how much annual rainfall you have wherever you are but I successfully grew a large Trich garden outdoors in New Zealand.

Annual rainfall was 1.1mtrs. It rained a lot through winter and was very cold, down to minus 3 on occasion. There was also a lot of heavy frosts. And to top it all off the soil was clay so not free draining at all.

There was plenty of sun through summer and autumn.

I never lost a plant to weather conditions.

I had Bridgesii, Peruvianus, Pachanoi, Terscheckii, Macrogonus, Werdermannianus, Taquimbalensis and various other Peruvanoids all growing successfully.

Until you have had to grow trichs in less than favourable conditions I think you would be surprised what they will tolerate.

Getafix

Edited February 23, 2015 by Getafix

[J Smith]

That's pretty similar temperatures to my place, but about double the rainfall. I have trichs planted straight in the ground in both good and poor soil and I'll get a small amount of frost damage but they are mostly fine. Bridgies suffer the most but come good, myrtillo will die straight away, pach are fine, Peru suffer a little.

If you use a very well draining soil in raised beds you might do ok. I reckon you should chuck a few in the ground and see how they go. If you can shelter them a little from winter wind with boulders or a wall even better. Getting early winter sun rather than late afternoon sun seems to help too.

[gtarman]

I remember reading that terschekii is the most cold (and possibly wet) hardy of the trichos. Would make a damn fine ground plant if given enough time...but you might want to look into terschekii hybrids maybe?

[Berengar]

Awesome information guys, exactly what I've been looking for! Thanks very much!

Wind could be a problem, we get extremely strong winds in late winter. A few weeks ago it pulled several ~50 year old pines out with roots and everything. But the place I intend to put them in is relatively sheltered, they should be fine in normal conditions. It snowed here I think twice in the last 30 years, and that was 1 cm or so that melted in a day. Frost damage is not really my main concern, that rarely if ever happens, but 'wet feet' and root rot most definitely are. The soil is a relatively free draining clay based soil with limestone fragments ('terra rossa'), I'll see what I can do to make it lighter and will try to make a raised sloped bed.

As for the species, I've started several terscheckii hybrids (I have most hopes for terXPC and PCXter), pure terscheckii, pasacana hybrid, tacaquirensis, escaycensis, chilensis, Corryocactus melanotrichus etc. Those should be more resistant to wet and cold. But they will not be ready to go in the ground for some time. This year I'll plant a couple I'm not afraid of loosing, to 'test the water', mostly bridgesii, some scopulicolaXpuquiensis and whatever else is around. I also have some grafted onto an Opuntia pad to act as a kind of 'replacement root' that is more resistant to wet conditions, will probably graft a couple more this year.

Again, thanks for all suggestions!

[Gunter]

That Terra rossa sounds ideal actually and many of the San Pedro forms come from areas with modest winter rainfall and occasional frost.

You should be fine.

Also some hybrids seem a little more cold hardy according to anecdote.

[Berengar]

I finally started working on this.

The soil is quite a bit worse than I had hoped in this part of the garden, clumpy red clay with lots of small to medium sized stones. Guess at least the drainage's sorted.

What do you guys think? Too terrible for growing cacti?

I added some compost and old cactus soil with perlite and hydroton, but probably not enough to make any difference. But that's OK, this is the first time I'm trying this. I've chucked in a few plants that I wouldn't be particularly sad if they died, but would be very happy if they survived. I'm hoping at least for a good learning experience. I could have made a lot more of an effort to make a raised bed, more free draining etc., but in the end I've decided to make it as simple as possible this year, and see what can/must be modified for the next.

This is how it looks now.

Any comments and suggestions are always very welcome!

Edited April 23, 2015 by Berengar

[zelly]

nothing ventured, nothing gained !

to loosen your soil you could spade it & turn it over to the depth of a shovel blade & if you wanted to you could screed each shovel full through a 2cm wire mesh screen to remove rocks etc. Thereafter every time you turn it, mulch the heck out of it with any green vegetative matter you have on hand. over time the hard clay soil becomes more friable

larger rocks around the plants & behind them help keep the soil warm which assists in root development.

[Berengar]

Thanks zelly!

I spent a few hours today breaking the soil with a pick axe, and tried to break up the clumps as much as I could. I guess if I tried sifting it, there would be nothing left!
Do the rocks in the soil hurt anything? I've actually read in several places that people suggest adding rocks to the soil for better drainage.

But that's great advice, I'll start breaking the soil in surrounding area this spring, and add leafy matter and other amendments for next year. Should be a lot better by then.

[☽Ţ ҉ĥϋηϠ₡яღ☯ॐ€ðяئॐ♡Pϟiℓℴϟℴ]

this^^ [DE] (unless you can source it cheaper)

or bulk pummice would cross my mind for the raised beds ;)

(already planned using it for outdoor cacti but dang ... in uk an all - zone 8 outdoors rlly lol - so the idea got scrapped)

even my opuntias got slain in our severely mild (for uk) winter just gone...

good luck and I can't wait to see your art progress through to completion

-hoss

http://www.bonsai4me.co.uk/Basics/Basicscatlitter%20page3.html

Edited April 23, 2015 by ☽Ţ ҉ĥϋηϠ₡яღ☯ॐ€ðяئॐ♡Pϟiℓℴϟℴ

[zelly]

I once thought adding rocks to the bottom of the pots would assist in drainage....until i discovered roots wont grow into this rocky barrier and thus the top layer of the rocks remained relatively 'wet', causing roots near it to rot. Rocks in the bottom of pots create a 'dead zone' where no roots will grow.

So I tossed the rocks and filled the pots full with soil. A root cannot extract anything from a rock unless the rock is cracked & fractured, so imho rocks have no place in soils where a person is trying to grow something.

Take your soil for example, how can rocks assist in drainage? Where is the water going to drain to? Down into more rock hard red clay? Now maybe if you had porous rocks like pumice stones or whatever, I could see where they would help, or if your soil was on top of a large gravel field.

imho all a rock does is dull the shovel or pickax

[Strontium Dawg]

Get some gypsum mixed in there, it will help break up the clay.

[Berengar]

Take your soil for example, how can rocks assist in drainage? Where is the water going to drain to? Down into more rock hard red clay?

Makes perfect sense.

So what do you think should be a good enough depth of loose soil to hard clay? Would a meter be enough? Don't think I can dig much deeper than that, the limestone starts to be pretty thick at that depth.

[zelly]

Would a meter be enough?

more than plenty. trich roots, even on big old plants rarely exceed 75cm in depth, if at that much. mostly they're along the surface & slightly below. in my garden I've never dug deeper then the depth of the shovel blade, unless planting a big potted plant with attached root ball.

gypsum helps, but worms find the taste disagreeable. only after I started spading in quantities of green vegetative matter did I really start to see fat healthy worms where none previously existed. dont get me wrong, i still have hard pan clay soil, but its a lot healthier & plants can thrive in it.

If the soil is moist or wet & the veg matter is green, decomposition takes place rather quickly

[_Cursive]

Get some gypsum mixed in there, it will help break up the clay.

Definitely!! Also it is pH neutral, contains Calcium and Sulphur. Calcium is not an earth stable element and is washed away readily especially in clay.

Gypsum is seriously under rated for how great it makes your soil become. I use Lime & Dolomite (Magnesium) to encourage microbacterial growth and to sweeten the soil.

Edited April 30, 2015 by _Cursive

[Berengar]

Visited my little garden for the weekend. Everything is coming along nicely.

[Berengar]

Hello all, long time no read!

So the little plants survived their first winter without a single scratch. For the last 5 days we've had night temperatures going down to -6 degrees celsius!! The whole continent has been experiencing a pretty severe winter. But luckily, it's been pretty dry here for now. But I have a bigger problem, and I'm really desperate for your help and ideas.

The two growing seasons they have been in the ground had gone pretty much the same. They start growing beautifully in april, continue through to may, only for their growing tips to be eaten by grasshoppers in june. And they stall from then on. Some throw pups, which also get eaten by grasshoppers. The little bastards only eat the soft, young tips, which is enough to prevent the plants from growing for the rest of the year. So what can I do to prevent that? I'm not close to their location so I can't go there every hour to kill the monsters. I have been thinking of some king of netting that would protect the tip but still allow the plant to grow freely, but can't really think of anything that would prevent the bugs from climbing underneath it.

Does anyone have any proven methods or suggestions? It would be very much appreciated!

 

[Micromegas]

mate i had this problem early on in my garden but with earwigs. I used blu-tak. You get a lump of blue-tak and squash it right into the tip of the cactus, so no critter can eat that bit. this protects the tip long enough for it to grow out safely. in my garden, earwigs come out early spring for about a month, so the blu-tak works long enough. this has been a great success for me for smaller plants. if the grasshoppers are around all season you may need to repeat.

 

one year, i planted broadbeans out in winter among the cactus, that spring the earwigs ate the broad bean leaves, not the cactus. since that spring, i have not had the same problem with earwigs, but for the first 2-5yrs of my garden it was a major drag, i used to go out every night with a torch and squash the buggers with a butter knife. but the blu-tak solved the need to do that.

 

once the plants are 1m +, they rarely suffer from major damage ime.

 

good luck.

[Berengar]

That is a great idea, thank you! I'll definitely try it.

So the plant can grow normally with blu-tak on it's tip? Does it remain in the center even when the growth starts to push it out? But it's no problem even if I have to go there every week to readjust the blu-tak, anything to enable them to just grow finally.

[Kykeion]

I'm not sure whats available in your part of the world, or what you are willing to try, but here is some info I found:

https://www.organiclesson.com/best-ways-of-getting-rid-of-grasshoppers-in-the-garden/

https://www.planetnatural.com/pest-problem-solver/lawn-pests/grasshopper-control/

[Micromegas]

grows out just fine, squish the blu-tak in real good, with a blunt (butter) knife if you need. if you look at the attached pic you will see on the base of the centre column a narrowed, scarred looking bit. this is where earwigs were attacking and threatening to eat the apical meristem, which they had already managed to do to some same-aged seedlings while I was not around. you can see the left over blu-tak, it says in place quite well. in the second growing season, not so many earwigs, you can see some scarring but the plant grew though ok. I had about 100 seedlings I 'blu-takked', most of them keep the main tip intact.

 

i don't know if it works for bugs other than earwigs, but i reckon it's worth a try. you might still get damage below the tip, but earwigs only eat the very newest growth. good luck!

no: it only remains on the tip for as long as it takes for the tip to grow out about one centimetre, but in my case with earwigs, this has been long enough, since the earwigs come at the start of the season when the growth is slowest.

 

 

but also, companion planting. give the bugs a sacrificial victim i doubt cactus is any bug's first choice for dinner.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Micromegas

[zelly]

depending on how big your plants are you want to protect & how many, you could possibly construct a 5 sided enclosure using screen door mesh materials, something you could lift up & place over the plants

[Berengar]

That was my first thought as well, but I'm not sure how well that would work in practice. It would have to go all the way to the ground so the little bastards cannot climb from underneath. I guess I could manage that. Bigger problem would be construction, I'm not at all skilled with welding and such, because wooden frame is out of the question, winds here have a tendency to rip out 100 year old trees with roots. And Trichocereus grow quickly... But I guess I will do this as a last resort, in a year or two. But the way this winter is going, I fear there will be nothing to protect in the spring...

I will also try my mesh-condom contraption, I now have a pretty good idea of how to implement it and will see if it works. As for the companion plants, I really don't know what would be resistant to drought, and still be succulent enough to attract grasshoppers. I have some Sedum and Delosperma plants around, but they don't touch them.The little monsters really seem to have a taste for the fresh, juicy cactus tips, they eat everything that is soft and doesn't have enough alkaloids to repel them yet. When they get to the older growth, they just stop and go away, only to return when the pups start growing.