Rate my setup

[Mackindabox]

Hey guys! I’ve been growing/collecting these babies for the past year and was just wondering if there’s any tips anyone can offer me? Anything that leaps out and says “what the hell is this guy doing!?”..  I’m sort of worried about making newbie mistakes. Most of what you see here are cacti I got from herbalistics before I discovered this place.. or at least most of the ones in the hot house are. I’ve done some research into the cultivation of these plants and am reasonably confident I’ve got the basics covered but I’m sure there’s some obvious mistakes I’m making due to my total lack of experience. I’m not exactly horticulturally inclined but these cacti are so beautiful I just felt I had to have a go at growing some of my own. It’s an overcast day, normally they get full sun most of the day. I’m watering them once every two weeks though I didn’t water them at all over winter.. so really I’ve only just started watering them again. I haven’t given them any kind of fertiliser yet. I hope posting this here is ok.

 

[Gimli]

First and foremost, put them in the ground

[Evil Genius]

Yeah, when you have the luck to have such a great climate, make use of it.  And yeah, nice collection. It will be the start of something great.

[Mackindabox]

2 hours ago, Gimli said:

First and foremost, put them in the ground

 

Thank you, Gimli. I’ll plant a few of them in the ground as you suggested. Dunno if I’ll be able to plant all of them as I’m fairly limited for space. My partner and I are both vying for space in the backyard. She wants to put garden beds in for vegetables and I need more room for cactus. I can already see this is gonna be an ongoing battle. Haha.

[Halcyon Daze]

It'll be fine. Raise your garden beds, and grow them together, They will both grow fine. But over time take over the space until she is left loving the cacti as much as you do

 

There are some nice metal brackets for making raised garden beds with sleepers. You just join the sleepers with the metal brackets like a big rectangle, and screw it all together using a cordless drill. They are available from Bunnings. The great thing is that you dont need to cement anything into the ground. You could even make your own brackets with sleeper off cuts, but the metal would last longer.

 

Edited October 29, 2019 by Halcyon Daze

[Strontium Dawg]

On 27/10/2019 at 9:58 PM, Mackindabox said:

 

Thank you, Gimli. I’ll plant a few of them in the ground as you suggested. Dunno if I’ll be able to plant all of them as I’m fairly limited for space. My partner and I are both vying for space in the backyard. She wants to put garden beds in for vegetables and I need more room for cactus. I can already see this is gonna be an ongoing battle. Haha.

I plant cactus in my vegetable gardens! 

[Change]

Hey there,

 

Gimili is spot on the money, cactus loving being in the ground, cos they really slow down their rate of growth once root bound. But hey, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to plant cactus in the ground. If your in this boat (like me), my advice would be to cut a lot of holes in the bottom of your pots to allow your plants access to the soil, this way they wont get root bound, but you can still easily cut the roots and move them if/when need be.

 

Your terracotta pots look beautiful, but they are too small to grow healthy cactus in, perhaps good for rooting cuttings, but youll need to repot them within a year. The black pots your using look a little better and should provide you with 2-3 years active growth before root bounding occurs. I like to use 9L buckets until I can establish a good-sized root ball, at which point they go into massive pots that have access to the soil below. I really wished I started planting all my fav cactus in huge pots when I first started growing them, it took me a few years to work this out. Unless your trying to bonsai your cacti little pots are a waste of time.

 

Next things I wanted to say was the plants in your greenhouse, are at a size where they can be adjusted to full sun. There isn’t much advantage to growing trichos and tbms in humid environments. The sooner they can be harden them off into full sun, the better they will grow. That being said, your greenhouse isn’t a total waste of time, get some shade cloth on it, fill it with peres, and by the end of the season youll be able to graft up a small army of seedlings (tricho seedlings and peres love heat and humidity). Then you can tell you girlfriend about the farmers markets, and while she is there buying fruits and veggies you can plant all your degrafted 10cms seedlings.

 

Hahaha, I just cant understand the logic of you guys and your veggies gardens. You know they sell veggies at the supermarkets right….. haha, or if your one of these organic hipsters who doesn’t like round up sprayed on your food you can always visit the farmers markets

 

And while your at it, get some seasol, cactus love fertilizer, just go easy with the nitrogen.

 

Happy Gardening

[Mackindabox]

Sweet!! Thanks all of you guys for the awesome tips. Ok, clearly I don’t have the basics down after all. Haha. I appreciate all this advice, this is really invaluable stuff to me, just starting out and all I’ve still got a lot to figure out. I’ll start making all the necessary tweaks to my setup.

 

I could definitely go about planting some of them in the ground.. I’ve just gotta wait for the missus to figure out where she wants her garden beds. If I plant them it’s going to be permanent and we’re not planning on going anywhere anytime soon so they’ll have plenty of time to get established. So they’ll grow alright in ordinary potting mix right next to vegetables? Here I am making up potting mix with like 50% pumice/45% cactus mix/5% perlite thinking that was the way to go. I hope that I can get my partner to love the cactus too, who knows..  time will tell. I’m not holding out much hope. I think she just finds the whole thing abit weird. Like you say, if I slowly take over her garden beds with cactus she’ll have no choice. haha. As far as garden beds go, we’ve got a bunch of them from our previous house where we had a much bigger back yard. So yeah, we’ve actually got more than we’re gonna need. 

 

Alright, I’ll ditch the terracotta pots and get some bigger plastic ones. I’m spewing because I just repotted these a couple of weeks ago into the terracotta ones. I read somewhere that terracotta pots were better because they drain quicker and you’re less likely to get rotted roots. I should have held off on repotting them. It’s probably not a good idea to repot them again so soon huh? 

 

Gotcha. I can get rid of the hothouse too. Or put it to the side at least. I’m not planning on growing any peres anytime soon cause I’m not feeling confident enough to start grafting stuff just yet.. tempting though it may be I’m slightly convinced I’m just gonna wind up butchering a bunch of plants unnecessarily. I’ll see how I go with these guys and if they wind up doing alright I’ll start getting more adventurous.

 

I honestly think she likes growing the veggies more as a hobby than anything else. Though I must admit the ones grown in our backyard taste a lot better than the stuff you get from the store. Not a vegetable obviously, but the strawberries she’s grows are amazing. Way tastier than the store bought ones. That being said, we still do get the bulk of our veggies from the supermarket. Used to go to the farmers market but it kind of became a pain in the arse. We’re just abit lazy I think. Or maybe it’s just me. 

 

Once again, thank you guys for your help. I really appreciate it..  and clearly need it. haha.