I love how everyone is suddenly a climate expert. Most people know more about managing a football team than predicting the climate, and however much they talk about it over a beer, that's not very much either ;) P.S. You do know that the article you linked directly contradicts what you said, right?...

Thanks for the link Iann. I was a little surprised to see almost all opuntia rated to -20, although there are probable more factors involved. I hear some people put straw down, but this prolonged cold would get through it eventually. this subject is not allowed is vastly overplayed, imho. The earth ...

I had some opuntia out in the garden, they have survived every winter so far. We hit minus 16 last week and perhaps not surprisingly, around 90% of them died. Is there cacti that survive such extremes with ease? I will be breeding the survivors and hopefully will set a tray of them out next winter.

Id be tempted to use a plastic tooth pick, nice and blunt.

Great pics!

I saw cacti similar to those in my local garden centre last year. Barrel cacti, with the spines sprayed red, labelled as ferocactus. o.0

Cant imagine it harming the spines much, but overspray cant be a good thing.

I bought a eurphorbia sp. unknown years ago from a garden centre. I have seen this same one branching before, please bear with me. I am not so hot with succulents, they don't have areoles, yet the columnar ones seem to branch (the ones similar to mine do anyway). My question is this, the little guy ...

Hehe, he is a little burnt on top, just like the rest of us here in Holland this week. He is recuperating in the front room, i like this one very much, I think ill keep him. Echinopsis are all pretty similar, and when you variegate them, well, it seems we have a pretty safe bet what it is now. Thank...

Howdy all, I picked a few of these up, they werent labelled but i liked them anyway. Can someone be so kind as to give a few opinions? I have a few suspicions but I dont want to influence the judging. One looks like it is about to flower, it is coming from an off centre areole, ill put the pic on wh...

I have never had a problem painting with plants in the room. Most nasties aren't in modern paints anymore.

That's a nice save and indeed almost unrecognisable as the same plant. The risk you took certainly paid off.

ROFL@Bill!!

You might be onto something there, the hippie types who go to these stores will go for biodegradable cactus patches rather than the plastic ones. I imagine cheaper to produce too . . .

Hi everyone, I saw cactus patches on sale in a health shop! You stick them on just like a nicotine patch and apparantly you lose weight. Sounds pretty crackpot to me, anyone else seen these? Surely the logical way to lose weight would be to have a cactus diet, I reckon the spines would make you thin...

That would be quite something. Maybe I didnt notice it before, but im pretty sure it all happened over 24hours, that would make some very busy ladybirds!!! Either way the plants look like they are on the mend. If it happens again ill be sure to take a photo

Sorry I can't, I should really have taken a photo before i removed and killed them. I have been googling for over an hour and I cant find anything that looks like them yet . . . . =/ I wonder if I bought them home last time I was in the local tropical plant garden centre. How about a pic of the dama...

Hi all, I noticed today something has been eating the leaves of my indoor pereskiopsis. It looks like snail damage but it appears to be done by small orange larvae, similar in shape but about 1/4 of the size of lady bird larvae. I have removed them by hand (there was only 7-8 on 5 plants) and given ...