Welcome Craig Fry!

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Mark
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by Mark »

That Penio looks good! My Escobaria hesteri, that I got from you, just started flowering. Do I need to have two plants to make seed?


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C And D
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by C And D »

At least 99% of all cacti and succulents are self sterile.

I've never seen an Escobaria set seed without another clone.
In my greenhouse, I almost never get seed of anything if I don't complete the task on pollination of 2 separate plants (different clones) my self with a brush, stick or tweezers.

The few self fertile plants cactus I can name off the top of my head are Frailea, Melocactus, Turbinicarpus swodobae,
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Aiko
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by Aiko »

C And D wrote:At least 99% of all cacti and succulents are self sterile.

The few self fertile plants cactus I can name off the top of my head are Frailea, Melocactus, Turbinicarpus swodobae,
Bowiea volubilis, Massonia pustulata, Notocactus magnificus, Wigginsia sessilifora.

Also have a look at this list of seed distributor ADBLPS: http://www.adblps-graines-cactus.com/Gr ... -02-01.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
After the species name there are a bunch of letters and numbers for most of them. The first one is either an 's' (self sterile) or an 'f' (self fertile). There are quite a lot of species with an 'f' on that list!
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by C And D »

Coryphantha macromeris v. runyonii
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Lacey Flowers
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C And D
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by C And D »

Succulent Soil Mixes, they always change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

My most recent dilemma, my soil mix went to hell because of the recent drastic changes in raw supplies.

I haven't discussed my soil mix in a long time, and it's probably changed since then.

I used to say "don't add any silt to your soil mix!"
Well I was wrong, you need some kind of soil binder, and if you have a dry mineral mix, then you need some silt to work as your binder.

It turns out that my old mix was highly dependent on pumice dust. All the old pumice supplies were loaded with dust, I would sift it out and throw away the dust, sometimes the bag was 20% dust, which would add up, I was throwing away huge bags of pumice dust.
I also added "Dry Stall" to the mix, which was small sized pumice, which was also loaded with dust that I would sift out.

Well I guess the suppliers got word that their pumice had way too much dust, so they sifted it all out first, and washed the pumice clean.
And at first I thought this was great, no more sifting, yea....

And then.... the potting mix I was using changed their recipe, it was much dryer and would not bind with the pumice granules.

I would mix up a batch of the new soil, and the potting mix would wash down to the bottom of the pot, and the top portion would be pure granular pumice, I hated it.

It turns out that with the dusty pumice mix, I would allow just enough pumice dust into my mix to supply the soil a silt like binder that would enable me to lower the potting mix amount. The pumice dust was also the mineral fraction of the soil mix, other than the inert grains of pumice and sand.

So what to do?
I went to the Farmer Supply, and asked them if they had any of the old pumice,
"Sure we do, we have a big pile of it out back"

It was the old pumice with about 50% dust, and they were mixing a little of it in with the new clean pumice to get rid of it.
I bought 4 60-lb bags.

And I also found a new Cactus Potting Mix at Home Depot made by Super Soil that seems to be pretty good, but you have to sift out the big stuff..

So the new mix for most plants is:
Potting Mix, ~20%
3/8-1/8" Pumice, ~45%
Dry Stall, 1/8-1/16" Pumice, ~25%
Pumice Dust, ~5%
Course Quartz Sand, ~5-10%

No other additives of any sort.

Sometimes we wouldn't have any sand to add, so we would add more dry stall.

For Haworthia, only ~5% potting mix and dust
For Conos, smaller grains with some extra pumice dust
Lithops, extra sand

To be continued...,
Last edited by C And D on Tue Sep 22, 2015 1:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by cdcfrms »

Where do you find your dry stall?
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by jorgeq »

Peter Walkowiak, President of the Palomar C&SS, gave our local club a presentation over a year ago (Monterey Bay C&SS) on his soil mix. He added wet perlite (60% of total mix) to a mix of 20% compost (or potting soil) and 20% decomposed granite fines/dust. He mixed it all together until you can’t see the white in the perlite. The DG dust & compost sticks to the wet perlite well. It stays together quite well. Its worked pretty well for me so far (I also use a rock mulch topping too). I wonder if this touches upon on some of the same ideas you discuss in your soil mix?

By the way, what’s your turn around on orders from your website? I put an order over the weekend?
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C And D
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by C And D »

We get our Dry Stall at "Whittier Fertilizer"

You can also get it at Horse Supply stores, the Feed Barn nearby has it.

----
Every grower will have their own "Perfect Succulent Soil Mix"
and that mix will not be perfect for another grower down the street

The idea of talking about works for me is that you can glean some information that can be contemplated and put into a general succulent culture informational knowledge base. Since everyone has different conditions.

As an addition to the discussion on soil.
My basic growing style is using a lean soil mix and more frequent watering.
I've been watering every 5-6 days the last month.
I also use a low concentration of acidic fertilizer in almost every watering
and water hard with deep soakings

I now water the Lithops/Dinterantus every 2-3 weeks, and need a low dose of Fert.
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C And D
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by C And D »

Back to Cactus fun !!!

I guess Astrophytum caput-medusae could be called one of my favorite plants

and Astrophytums are probably one of the few cactuses worth hybridizing, the others are Ariocarpus, Echinopsis for flowers and Copiapoa for monstrose forms.

So what can be more exiting than a Astrophytum caput-medusae hybrid!!!

Last week while checking the seedling pot I see something funny
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Close up
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Doesn't look like anything other than a Astrophytum caput-medusae hybrid
And since it was in the pot with the other medusa, it has to be mothered by the A. caput-medusae

Flowering grafted plant
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I have not cross pollinated the mother medusae with other plant's pollen on purpose, to keep the medusae seed pure,
but I have been crossing of the mother medusae to other Astrophytums for fun, and getting seed, lot's of it.
I have a pot with some of in it, but they are too small still to see anything out of the ordinary, I will keep you posted.
I guess I did this cross with the mother by accident, but now have purposefully making these crosses.

The successful crosses have been with Astrophytum myriostigma v. coahuilense, Onzuka, and asterias hybrids.
I will be putting some seed up for sale since I have so much, but can't guarantee that they aren't mostly selfed.

I can't wait to see what these little plants will become ...
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by george76904 »

Please let us know when seed will be on sale! That is one funny looking seedling! I cant wait until my astrophytum capt medusae seedlings grow into big plants! Do you know if you will be offering plants as well or just seeds?
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Post by C And D »

After looking at it closely, I started to have doubts about it being a hybrid,
it looked like it could be a stray Copiapoa seedling, being brown and all
So I needed to look at some other Astrophytum seedlings to compare and see if they have brown skin with lite spots

These are some typical Onzuka x seedlings
same brown skin, same lite spots, same little tubercles protruding from the early growth
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by kreative01 »

C And D wrote:Succulent Soil Mixes, they always change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

So the new mix for most plants is:
Potting Mix, ~20%
3/8-1/8" Pumice, ~45%
Dry Stall, 1/8-1/16" Pumice, ~25%
Pumice Dust, ~5%
Course Quartz Sand, ~5-10%

Have you ever experimented with small lava rock and or limestone(dust) ?
I got some limestone for acidity but haven't jumped into trying it yet.
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by george76904 »

Just a heads up, if you are looking to make your soil more acidic limestone will not work. It is alkaline and will increase the ph of your soil not decrease it...
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Post by C And D »

Update on the Astrophytum caput-medusae hybrid seedling

It's still alive and growing!
11/16/2015
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Very odd indeed.
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K.W.
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Re: Welcome Craig Fry!

Post by K.W. »

Good morning Craig,

terrific, I keep my fingers crossed for the future of that seedling.

Very rare, very special, very interesting! =D>


Best wishes and good luck,

K.W.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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