My guess would be scale has taken over. You will likely be able to peel or flake off sheets of that discoloration because it's a layer of insects on top of the cactus. Thank you! Do you not thinks it’s a sunburn? Will an insecticide spray help? When my cacti get sunburned the flesh gets quite soft ...

Hi Dodi, Did some research on the Bayer website, and instructions for your Admire Imidacloprid indicate a dilution of 35 ml per 5 liters of water. It's awfully hard to overdose cacti on Imidacloprid, so you should be fine if you up the amount to 10ml per liter. Your Melocactus is definitely worth s...

One thing I find nearly absent in most cacti books is growing advice for your own home environment whether indoors or outdoors. Most of the books will discuss cacti in habitat, but the majority of the books are read like checklists for a collection. And that makes sense because their goal is taxonom...

My guess would be scale has taken over. You will likely be able to peel or flake off sheets of that discoloration because it's a layer of insects on top of the cactus.

well South African Post is still working somehow, though a package I ordered which was posted on march 11 is stuck in SA ever since #-o That's a great example of what I mean. You may have been able to order it, but if it's still stuck in SA from more than 2 months ago and it isn't the seller being ...

I thought maybe we could make a living list of all of the countries that are allowing or disallowing parcels to export. For example, I went to make several seed orders this month and ones from Poland and Germany were canceled because the sellers said the government is not allowing outgoing parcels. ...

There is some opposition to using because of environmental impacts as well. I'll let you do your homework on that. There are companies that sell peat from sources that are more sustainable as well.

Others will be able to give you more detailed feedback but I just want to let you know that this is not that bad and far from dead. The rather stretched one (Austrocylindropuntia or Eve's Eye) is stretching for more light and probably in the worst shape but is totally salvageable. I would take a cle...

Thanks for the advice everyone. It's been happening over the course of a couple of months now and seemingly haphazardly to random grafts. I have quarantined those that are affected and will be doing a deep clean of my grow shelf with bleach. When I do that I will check the roots to see what might be...

Thanks for sharing Shane. I tried a few years ago and didn't have any luck from a couple of different batches of nopales. My theory was that they were either sprayed after harvesting or because they were kept refrigerated, putting them into the soil at room temperature was too much of a shock. In bo...

I've never had this happen before. Stems are drying up from the bottom or shriveling up and flopping over. I'm using Mycorrhizae Growing Mix for the soil with additional perlite and diatomaceous earth for aeration. This is happening under LED, T5 and windowsill cacti in different rooms so I'm thinki...

I've had this damage before from squirrels. I caught them in the act too.

Now this one is really intriguing . All the species pictured in the listings are different from each other....but they are all named the same...either Ariocarpus, Aztekium or Astrophytum. Sure looks like Lophophora w. to my rookie eyes. Lot's of bids, too. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Large-Ariocarpus-...

Just saw this topic today. I am definitely in the same boat! This summer will be my last chance (for a while) to really spend a lot of time on the hobby. Starting in the fall, family care needs are going to require a lot more of my free time and I will probably be limited to no more than 15-20 minu...

I've always had great luck from T5 fixtures at 6500K and switched to some Samsung LED boards with Meanwell drivers at 3000K and 4000K. They were too strong and burned the seedlings even at 14 inches. Right now I'm looking to switch over to the rather cheap LED shop lights at 4000K. They've been work...