The view from above on 9/24/16:
I didn't realize that the plant would be so prolific about offsetting, and I decided to give it a "haircut" the following March. A whole bunch of pups on 3/4/17, which I gave to Desert Creations in Northridge CA:
After the "haircut":
A couple of observations:
- Unless you live in the tropics, all species of Discocactus need occasional light watering in winter to keep their roots alive. That's my standard fall/winter routine -- light watering every 3 weeks. With that said, the buenekeri's winter shriveling is normal, which made it rather easy to pull off pups right before the plant was ready for deep watering as the growing season started toward the end of March.
- Pups growing around the parent stem's cephalium -- that's peculiar, and I spotted the first few way back in 2014. Either it's normal for the species, or I was doing better than I expected.
I created a beautiful monster! Here's the problem -- the buenekeri's pot is full, and since my strictly limited growing space is pretty full too, I don't have the room for a bigger pot. That being the case, I wonder if the plant needs another "haircut". I can see pros and cons to doing it, so the pros are:
- Thinning out enough pups to keep the buenekeri in its current pot without the potential for trouble.
- Letting nutrient energy go toward the parent stem and the older pups instead of putting it into growing more new pups.
- I know a few local growers who would like to get the pups left on my "barbershop floor".
- All of the pups are firmly attached (I just checked, and even now this is the case). That means having to do some "cactus surgery" -- at best, it'll disfigure the parent stem and the "chief" pup that's growing a nice cephalium and flowering, and at worst I could lose the entire plant.
So what do y'all think -- should I leave the buenekeri as-is, or do the surgery? If the general consensus is that the plant needs it, I sure would appreciate some advice on how I should approach this before I commit. Nice thing is that I wouldn't have to follow through on the commitment until winter here in SoCal is almost over.
As long as I'm judicious about how I pull out the smaller pups, the patience will be worth it. Guess I shouldn't worry so much about this. The tricky part will be timing, so I'll keep a keen eye on the weather in March. Coming after 3 years of drought, SoCal has blessed us with a lot of rain thus far. In wet years, February is the coldest and wettest month, so if that's what happens as the rain pattern continues, I may be looking at late March/early April for the end of winter and time to do the haircutting.
