Greetings from New Orelans

[jimmyhat1978]

Hello, thought I would introduce myself. I put a cactus garden in the front of my house a few weeks ago and moved some cacti into it recently. Currently I have a golden barrel cactus that I have had for a few years, a trichocereus pachanoi crest, a normal trichocereus pachanoi, and a small prickly pear. I am growing them in containers. The two pachanoi are new to me by about a month. I know that the golden barrel and normal pachanoi need to be repotted, the soil holds too much water in this wet rainy environment. They are in a southern exposure with plenty of sun so I think I am OK there. Actually the reason that I started a cactus garden is that the sun and heat in that location kills pretty much everything I have ever put there.... The guy I bought them from recommended a potting mix of 20%Promix BX and 80% perlite for container gardening. I have no idea if this is right or not, any advice would be appreicated. He was also side dressing fertilizer on the top of the pots with a granular fertilizer. Granular sure is convenient, but I am not sure if this will burn the cacti or not. My camera battery is recharging right now, but I'll post a picture of the cacti once it takes a charge, but I guess you all have seen a cactus before

[gemhunter178]

Welcome!

[jimmyhat1978]

What is the largest picture file you can use on this site? I have a 1.5mb and it wont seem to post.

Thanks.

[toadstar]

Uploading pictures here is an iffy expedition.

Try going here: http://imgur.com/
Click the green "new post" button at the top of the page and upload your image.
Copy and paste the link it gives you here in your message on the forum.

[jimmyhat1978]

http://imgur.com/a/Qtc6p

Lets try this Pics attached

[greenknight]

Welcome to Cactiguide!

Your imgur link works fine - nice plants. You can attach images up to 500 kb, but it's easier to use a site like imgur than edit your photos.

That mix should be ok - the Pro-mix does have a lot of peat, but a little is all right. It would be extremely light, though - I would substitute some kind of gravel (not limestone) for some of the perlite, added weight to make the pots more stable. It would hold even less water that way, too, safer for cacti.

As for fertilizer, cacti don't need a lot - use no more than half the standard amount. Use a "bloom food" type of formula which is low in nitrogen. Granular is ok, even better is a timed-release type.

[hegar]

I too want to extend a warm welcome to you. I took a look at your plants and they look fine to me.
About the growing medium: I would be careful with either peat-based material and perlite. The former, because desert cacti generally do not do well in peat and are more likely to die of root rot, if placed in it and perlite is too light. Cacti can become rather heavy and using a pot with a light-weight growing medium will more likely than not cause the plant to topple. This would be especially the case where a columnar cactus is planted. Tipping over could result in severe injury to your plant, including breaking off part of it.
I do process my digital images with the Gimp2 software, which I installed on my computer. It is free.
Then I export my images and save them as JPEG images with a size of 600x450 bytes. The images then will remain below 500 kilobytes in size, even at a high resolution, and will be acceptable for posting directly on this blog.

Harald