Healing Skin damage

[allygracebz]

I received a bowl from Lowes with 3 cacti in it for my birthday this past year, and one (who I have named Gordan) had a strange flower. It turns out the company GLUED a fake flower on to my lovely cactus -_- it started coming off and took skin with it. It also had skin breakage near it's underside from what looks like over watering. Gordan is supposed to produce offsets and bloom lovely yellow flowers but has done nothing of the sort the entire time I have had him, and he should have. I'm afraid the ignorant care he received before I got him has created permanent damage:( and will prevent him from producing pups and blooming. Is there any way I can help these things heal?

[CHADDYBIGGUMS]

Chip all of those glued rocks away and carefully take your cacti to bare roots, the soil they come in is sub par to say the least, and will inhibit their growth immensely. Let the bare cacti set out for a day or two so the roots can callous over from the trauma. Go get cactus, citrus, and palm soil, and mix that 50/50 with pearlite or pumice and re plant them in that. Make sure you get the root ball full of soil again. Also don't water them for a week or two after you get them potted up again. As for the hot glued flowers, I try and pull them off, but if that doesn't work, I hear that they will grow them off. Who knows how long that will take.

[CHADDYBIGGUMS]

The skin damage should heal over time, just probably faster with better growing media. The pups will come faster too.

[greenknight]

Best thing to do with the glued-on strawflower is take a small pair of scissors, like manicure scissors, and trim it as close as you can. Just leave the glue alone.