new new cactus hydroculture

[Rev]

image number exceeded in other thread...

guys and girls may i present the future :cool:

..of stay at home winter holidays

bask in the beauty of your artificial sun and cactus wonderland

Heres how the f and d cacti are going

i bought a table - good value cos i already had a 400 w light

no room for MJ here! (damn weed - as if it cant grow easily enuf)

this is cactus country and im a cactus c(o)unt :cool:

of course the only way to keep it economical is to cram it full

and the waste heat IS my house heating! so its double economical.

[ 10. June 2005, 14:01: Message edited by: Rev ]

[Rev]

assorted others - astro, echinocereus, coryphanthas, cereus etc... they all love it

[Rev]

bridgesii (for kicks) and turbinicarpus lophophoroides on pereskiopsis

[Rev]

a white lopho graft - this was from darcy in summer. now its 50c coin size. hoping for flowers soon [smile]

[Rev]

Trich heaven- all those syrange seeds n hybrids that have come my way in the last 18 months - big thanks to all of you [smile] as u can see coming on nicely

[Rev]

oh yeah and its handy cos i can grow some salad stuff over the frosty months like basil and it makes the house smell good

[strangebrew]

Very nice indeed! :cool:

I'd love to know what some of the interesting hybrids are that you've got in there.

[gusto]

Excellent setup for sure. Yearround growth might not be optimal for flowering age plants, but it ought to be perfect for the youngsters. Seeing as the photos appear lacking in the blue spectrum, you must be running a HPS rather than a halide light.

Hope this works well for you. Faster growth means you'll sooner be able to share some of those promising hybrids.

[ 10. June 2005, 15:15: Message edited by: gusto ]

[AndyAmine.]

Congrats Rev, nice one..

Thats similar to what mine shuld look like in a few months, just planted 20 bridgesii, 20 Pachanoi and 20 Peruvianus..

Their in a humidity chamber under fluro's for now so Ill take some pics when there is more to show.

[AndyAmine.]

What medium or mix of medium have you found to be the best Rev, I notice you seem to be using varying ammounts of perlite and expanded-clay.

From what Ive read and been told its best to keep the porosity or partical size roughly the same though out the mix or you will get problems wiht drainage and dry pockets plus other stuff I cant remember, I remember referance to this mix in particular. Apoth can probably elaborate.

For youngin's I usually use perlite with the clay ontop to keep the perlite from being distrubed, or sift out the smaller bits of clay to mix in with the perlite. For older specimens I use straight expanded clay.

Hmmm, I wonder how rockwool would go.....

[teonanacatl]

beautiful :D light looks funny though lol

[pat dasein]

How does it work? Am I just seeing cacti + medium in pots sitting in water? What about nutrients? Bubbler or flood/drain?

If you could break down the details or even draw a picture of a cross section I'd really appreciate it.

[Rev]

thanks guys

yeah im havin fun with it

id never say its the ultimate aim of a collection but great for propagating in winter months when its too cold or even summer when the evaporation rate and slat buildup really messes with your baby seedlings.

yeah its a 400W HPS - had it for years but wasnt until i juts got the flood n drain table syte that made it workable

im using a mix of whatever i had available

theres teh imported rocks whic dry out fast and theres the aussie oes that seem to hold a lot more moisture that re looking better for cacti

often i put rocks in the pot and top with perlite to which i put in the seedlings

they need shade and constant moisture till their roots reestablish and they get down into the media

then they are off

For those o/s its just a run of the mill aussie flood and drain setup from any hydro shop or better still second hand

theres a reservoir tank with nutes you keep topped up and change every fortnight

and a timer turns on a pump which floods the table for say 15 min at whatever interval you choose. then switches off and the water runs by gravity to the reservoir below

thinking about desert sands and gravels and the wetting nature of them - flooding followed by shar drainage just points dierctly at rock /perlite mixes

add nutes - no messing with Ec's or all that just change fortnighly and put the solution on your outside cacti n succulents

[Rev]

strangebrew:

Very nice indeed! :cool:

I'd love to know what some of the interesting hybrids are that you've got in there.

well..yeah whetever ive been doin in the last year.

i am hopelessly behind in growing out my seed but with tis way i can do it easily in batches and know that ill have x number of robust plants ready for outside in about 6-9 months

not nearly all of my hybrids are of psychoactive significance. some are just for colour

like trying to get a coloured spachianus thats alos a good grafting stock

Some of the ones in there are from the eileen crosses that reshroomed did ages back. there was 6 seed batches i think but the parentage was unsure - some could be spachianus, or pachanoi or peruvianus or even my coloured echinopsis

so theyre labelled 1- 6 and im watching for variations in form to see what the parentage might be - so far it looks to be strongly spachianoid in there but ive seen things emerging differently

also i just have mixed pots of failed germination batches where only a dozen came up out of 100

in cleanup i often wind unidentifiable seedlings that im sure will turn out to be species i thought id failed at. the cool thing about the hydroculture is that event seedlinsg that looked emaciated and screwed often come good after long low level exposure to moisture in the shade on the inert carrier

Theres Macrogonus, terscheckii, peruvianus, werdermannianus, and forgotten others in there.

theres some echinopsis x pachanoi and echinopsis x scop, echinopsis x fat pach in there somewhere - some only 1

[pat dasein]

Very inspiring stuff, thanks a lot Rev (also Salvi)! I'm going to get to work on mine tonight using chlorine buckets and a fish tank pump.