I have this Astrophytum Asterias for a year and it is growing well outdoor. It used to get around 2-3 hours of direct sun everyday and I water it once every fortnight. Two months ago I move it to a bigger pot and I changed its location. I placed it in the greenhouse where it will get around 2 hours...

Hi Steve, Looking at the pic of CCCs mix, i'd be surprised if it was much different that a bag of SuperSoil cactus mix (red bag) with maybe a bit more pumice/perlite added. In my opinion it needs much more pumice added! We have used the SuperSoil mixed with pumice at 50/50 but have moved onto more ...

Steve, Does this blend drain well? If I use that much soil (loam) in my mix it won't drain adequately; tends to get clogged. I found I needed to cut the soil component down to 30-35% at most. Maybe my loam is finer than yours, though. The dirt in my garden seems to be taking a long time to dry out ...

Your not really gaining anything using gravel except weight, I would leave out the gravel and just use the pumice 50/50 or go even highter with the pumice if you still want faster drainage. I was wondering about the gravel, so I guess it would make more sense to keep it at 50/50 garden soil and pum...

At the risk of hijacking someone else's thread, I'd like to break out a new one here. This comes from a comment prompted by Ian: Pumice is rock. CEC is virtually zero. Porous is not the same as CEC, which measures how well a substance holds nutrients (without water!) in a form available to plants. D...

Mughal has good advice. I would stress the "avoid water" part. You will be tempted to do it, but you must wait! Over the years I've learned the virtue of patience, so I'm taking the advice I'm getting here to heart. It took longer than I wanted, but last Sunday I finally put the asterias ...

That is unusual for Ikea! I'll have to check out my local one in case I get lucky. However, I guess the timing would be bad if we're looking in winter. If the soil got any water from Ikea at the wrong time, I'd definitely suspect problems with the rootstock. Unfortunate really, considering how hard ...

That's excellent, and one of the pleasures I'm finding here at the forum is to hear from so many different people over the world who share the enjoyment of cacti and succulents. Can't imagine what it would be like without the online community. Glad to be with all of you!

Well, I hope I'm not adding fuel to the fire here... RichR's topic on this thread got me little interested about the subject. Back in June, I started my new collection with cactus mix prepared by the California Cactus Center. Here's a sample: http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/userpix/4655_CCC_soil_sam...

Okay, so I treated the mealy worms with some rubbing alcohol. Going to get some Sun Spray Ultrafine oil hopefully tomorrow. Thank you so much:) Sorry to be picky here -- mealy bugs are a type of scale insect, not worms. Mealies will typically glom onto the skin of cacti where they suck the plant's ...

I have two melo azureus and a bunch of melo mantanzanus. The Mantanzanus seem more prone to dying in cool weather, I haven't lost an azureus yet. Slightly below 0'F - 50% losses immediately. ~5'C at nights on my garage windowsill, maybe 1/5 losses over the winter with plants gradually shrinking and...

The point is that it should be wet in winter. That's when we get our rainfall in Southern California, and exactly the same as western South Africa. It will appreciate some water in summer as well. Thanks for uncrossing the wires in my brain there. Okay, so now I have it - watering for the Senecio e...

IME, they are prone to randomly dying when the temps are on the cool side. That's Melocactus for you - they want some water in the winter, but get fussy if it's too cool for them. Since you said that Melos are prone to randomly dying when they're on the cool side, I'd be interested to hear about yo...

Hello Steve, and welcome to the forums. :) If your ever in riverside give this guy a call. The Mexican hat cactus nursery Lots of specimen sized plants and most importantly, lots of great, relevant advice from a guy that has been growing them for a very long time. :wink: Thanks, Tony! I don't get o...

The correct name is Senecio mandraliscae. Rowley pushed it, along with most of the other "finger" senecios into Senecio talinoides in the 1990's so it probably is more proerly named Senecio talinoides ssp. mandraliscae. Natural distribution of this plant is unknown, so it may be a hybrid....