'tis the season!

Astrophytuns and Ferocactus are relatively easy and fast growers as seedlings. Columnars such as Pachycereus marginatus too. I'll say. I got germination on Pachycereus marginatus just one day after sowing. They were going strong for a couple of months until squirrels or pack rats ate the seedlings....

Yeah, normal. This is what they do .

Some wrapped up newspaper is a very good way to shield delicate plants from impact. You don't need to overthink these sort of things with complicated or expensive solutions. My method isn't complicated or expensive, if you need to move a lot of product. It's a simple way to make a custom-fit contai...

pone wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 8:54 pmThat might work. Do you need to cut any holes in the tube to allow air exchange?

I've never poked holes in the tube, caps, or any part of the package. I haven't received any negative feedback selling/shipping 100+ plants this way on eBay, so I feel pretty confident that your cacti will be fine.

Well sounds like you are well on your way. The only downside to perlite is that it floats away when water gets to it, so you'll probably need some kind of top dressing to keep it all contained. If you're budget conscious like me, you just go out to your yard and sift through some gravels to fill the...

I ship cacti in kraft mailing tubes all the time and have never had any problems. You didn't indicate the diameter of the plant, but if I was mailing a bunch of columnar cuttings like yours, I would buy a set of 4 inch diameter tubes, like these on eBay , then cut to size with a hacksaw. The tubes a...

Did you find a solution? What is the max length and diameter of the cacti you are shipping?

...Anyway hopefully in the near future we will have some clarified rules for posting then everybody will know where they are. Nobody wants to discourage beginners, but the forum is intended for all and we need contributors as well as those simply asking identification questions. You may think you h...

I think we should create rules for this section. All this discussion is only creating a bad relationship between members. Rules are rules, and are impersonal. For example: Cacti Identification Rules: Any member can post only one request (one thread) per week, containing a maximum of three different...

The simplest way is to just have a single forum for Cactus and other Succulents Identification, since many beginners do not always initially know the difference and post a mixed post in either of the present sections. The Euphporbiaceae is a vast family of which only a few are succulent, some just ...

Aiko is now in charge of Moderating the Identification Forum so no doubt he will come up with some policy regarding the number and frequency of identification requests? There have been various threads locked but no policy stated. I think this is completely the wrong way to go about this. It must fe...

There are 2,046 species accepted in the genus Euphorbia , the majority of which are not xerophytic and even fewer of them are succulent or like any cactus. I come here for the other succulents and usually avoid looking at cacti. Cool. So we keep the status quo, or add a new section along the lines ...

I don't think you need to throw out the soil that your cactus is planted in, but you can amend it with some porous, well-draining mineral substrate, and you don't have to break the bank to do it. To be honest, I wouldn't trust anything sold as cactus potting soil at a big box hardware store (e.g., L...

I'm not trying to stress you out any further, but that soil mix looks like it has way too much organic material. Most good mixes have at least half inorganic lightweight substrate, such as pumice or perlite.