Winter Fertilizer for my bog-ponic cacti

[Inyan]

My winter fertilizer for my cacti. This is how I do it. First, I mix my fertilizers in a bucket. I like to get a nice muddy green color going. Next, I break that fertilizer up into portions I can soak my babies into like so.Color is important to me. I like to have my cacti sitting in a fertilizer such as this for a few hours during the winter months.  With bog-ponics I feel it helps keep up a nice healthy algae mat in the bin they are in if they get a nice healthy dose of liquid fertilizer ever so often. Every so often I can scrap up the algae dry it and then recycle it for fertilizer. Its a win win.

[DualWieldRake]

I'm all for dumping things in a bucket of water and not having to babysit shit, +1

[Inyan]

@DualWieldRake What doesn't kill my cacti makes them stronger. 

[Drildo]

So you mix up a bucket of muck, then sit your cacti thats INSIDE a pot, INSIDE this Muck Bucket for a few hours each winter.

How often would u say u sit your potted cacti into this Muck Bucket during winter?   Few hours 1 day a week?    Few hours 1 day a month?   They don't sit in the Muck bucket all winter long do they man?

Interesting

[Inyan]

@Skelum. They sit in there until they tell me they want out or I need the space to make another cacti happy. A few hours one day a week would be a good minimum, but many of my cacti sit in water like this for months. If they are going to sit in this muck for months I will dilute out the muck to a light green muck which is cleared soon in a few days. Presumably the water becomes clear due to the algae that rests upon it eating up the extra nutrients. But, I'm assuming the cacti get a nice dose as well. 

[Inyan]

Just now for instance I removed these from the waterBoth have literally been sitting in this water since just before this first set of pictures was posted. These next cacti... have been sitting in this amount of water give or take for months...

[Inyan]

Just a little update to show some of my cacti still in the bog since the last post.  

[MeanGreen]

Very nice as usual Inyan.

The graft on that last pic seems to be growing a sort of translucent green spine under each areole, that's very cool I've never seen that! Am I tripping or can you confirm?

 

I have a few recent grafts I need to snap pics of. Some Yowie x Psycho0 and koehres bridgesii.

[Inyan]

@MeanGreen You are definitely seeing a green growth, but it is not a spine. Many of my seedlings are sending out pups like mad as well after their winter feeding as you can see the start of on this little guy 

[MeanGreen]

Ok really nice, yeah I didn't think it was an actual spine. So do you think these green excrescences will turn into pups? What did you feed your grafts with?

[Anodyne]

13 hours ago, MeanGreen said:

The graft on that last pic seems to be growing a sort of translucent green spine under each areole, that's very cool I've never seen that!

 

Apparently they are vestigial leaves! (source)

[MeanGreen]

Amazing! A prehistoric tricho haha!

Makes sense though since spines are basically evolved leaves, maybe some ancient leaf genes can still be expressed.

[Inyan]

@MeanGreen It goes without saying that some genes are being expressed to give this unique phenotype. The question I have is what happens if you breed two specimens carrying this trait together? Will you get a magnification of this trait over time and generations and how far can that trait be taken? It would be awesome indeed to breed for a Trichocereus with larger vestigial leaves and at what point do we start considering them true leaves? How large must the leave be before they are considered true leaves?

 

Edited November 29, 2017 by Inyan

[MeanGreen]

Theoretically you could stabilize this trait by selecting offsprings which carry this trait and backcrossing them to the mother or father, and do that 3 time, always backcrossing successive progenies to the same parent plant. In breeding this technique is called cubing and it's the quickest way to stabilize a desired trait in a gene line. Mendel's law says the 1st backcross's genepool should be 75% identical to the parent's gene pool. With the 2nd backcross (a.k.a squaring) this goes up to 87.5% and with the 3rd you get up to 93.75%.

 

The only issue is the amount of time this would take with trichos, 3 generationa from seed to flower.

[Inyan]

1 hour ago, MeanGreen said:

Theoretically you could stabilize this trait by selecting offsprings which carry this trait and backcrossing them to the mother or father, and do that 3 time, always backcrossing successive progenies to the same parent plant. In breeding this technique is called cubing and it's the quickest way to stabilize a desired trait in a gene line. Mendel's law says the 1st backcross's genepool should be 75% identical to the parent's gene pool. With the 2nd backcross (a.k.a squaring) this goes up to 87.5% and with the 3rd you get up to 93.75%.

 

The only issue is the amount of time this would take with trichos, 3 generationa from seed to flower.

While I am aware of how this works in theory... we all know probability doesn't exactly work like that in reality when it comes to genetics. You could backcross 3 generations and in theory have 50% of one parent in that initial f1 cross show up each and every time. Never mind that depending on how the crosses are done you may always have the chloroplasts and mitochondrial DNA only coming from one parent as those are passed from the maternal side and not the paternal side.

 

Time is definitely an issue as is having the proper parents from which to do this cross. Providing you don't give a damn about time and how long it takes then the best idea is of course to acquire another specimen that is already exhibiting this phenotype to avoid inbreeding depression. 

 

Thought I would share an update of a Trichocereus on its own roots in my bog-ponic setup. Suffice it to say I am not brave enough yet to move the water any higher up on this one for more than 12 hours at a time, but I have allowed this specimen to sit in water up to the soil line as I have done the same with other Trichocereus as well that are on their own roots. 

 

[Inyan]

Todays sharing of bog-ponics

[Inyan]

Despite my heavy fertilizing via bog-ponics... the winter cold is slowing down the growth of some of my specials. Thought I would share here though so you can see the results of cold + bog-ponics + fertilizer on my little specials.These two are hanging out in 5 gallon buckets of murky fertilizer + water. I expect the water will clear up in a few days as the algae will run through most of it once it gets kicking again. 

[Inyan]

I just took this photo a few minutes ago to show the roots and how they grow through the algae.

[Inyan]

I went outside this morning intent on planting some more cacti seed. My hands grew numb as I worked outside getting my soil ready. Next, I opened my green house up. My morning glory vines had some dead leaves already from the cold. Suffice it to say, the jury is still out on my cacti growing in freezing water. Bottom line, you have to push that envelope to see what it can give you.

[Inyan]

Just a picture to show the first signs of frost damage on some of my plants. Seeing that.. I decided to plant another 1000+ cacti seeds in the bog.

[Inyan]

Just another picture to show bog-ponics has not let me down even in the winter.  Picture taken today.

[Inyan]

Still growing these cacti in the bog like a boss.