Sizes of your collection

[Carpkel]

How many cacti and succulents do you have and how long have you been collecting?
I have been collecting for 25 years and have about 350 cactus and succulents. About 90 percent of the collection are cacti.

[ohugal]

I have about 90 succulents. I think 70% are cacti. The species vary, but I am going more into the direction of Pterocactus, Turbinicarpus, Gymnocalycium and Cleistocactus. Some of the plants I have quite a while, but began collecting about 3 years ago.

[7george]

There was a similar topic in this forum some years ago.
Mine are about 200 pots and some plants in the back-yard garden. In many pots I keep 2, 4 or up to 10 smaller succulent plants so exact number is hard to tell. Always some of them die and some are being transplanted or propagated to fill the gaps.
Most of those are cacti.

[jerrytheplater]

I don't have a count of my plants but I first started growing cactus while maybe 10 years old. I killed them all by planting in a dish garden, keeping them indoors without enough light, and not enough water. No fertilizer. I think I must have less than 100 plants now. I am really enjoying Euphorbia from Madagascar and have about 10-15 plants besides about 17 seedling E. tulearensis since Jan 2023. Next most popular type are those that can handle dry cold over winter. Cold below 10F as this is my climate. Next are those that need dry cold but above freezing-these are currently stored at a friends greenhouse over winter. That may change and would force me to give them away. I have those that need a warm somewhat moist winter rest, or no rest. The Euphorbia fall into this category.

Started again when a father of young children. I was at the Philadelphia Flower Show and I bought three succulents with my daughter. That started my curiosity as to what the ID of the plants was. I started using the library and interlibrary loan to read every book I could find. That was in the early 1990's.

Here is the earliest photo I found of a cactus dish garden dated April 28, 1990. So, this means I started previous to this, maybe 1988 as I remember taking my oldest to Philly when she was 4 or so-it was before school started.

1990-4-28 Dish Garden.jpg (85.07 KiB) Viewed 11674 times

[greenknight]

I started killing cacti and succulents about 50 years ago, they didn't start collecting until somewhat after that. I have around 40 pots, some are clumps rather than individual plants. I once kept a dish garden going for quite a few years, but after one plant developed rot and I had to split it up in a hurry I decided not to do that again.

[gabby c]

I got my first succulent in 2015 but didn't start buying much until 2017. After almost killing everything a few times I currently have about 200 pots, 40 are cactus. The cactus collecting is pretty new, they've grown on me.

[anttisepp]

As a schoolboy I seriously begun in 1980 and nowadays have about 300-400 pots.

[Aiko]

I will not even start counting the number of plants or pots I have. I started growing in 1995. First few years on a window sill, since 1998 in a greenhouse. Most of my plants I have sown from seeds, about two thirds of the entire collection. I started sowing on a large scale since 2006, although I do have some nice plants from a few years earlier too. This spring I have to sow about 180 pots. I have already made the labes, so the biggest chore of the sowing process is actually already done, just need to do the fun part and fill the pots with seeds next weekend!

I have two greenhouses in use, a big one of 30 square meters and a smaller one I only bought three years ago, of about 6 square meters. I just fetched a third greenhouse (5 square meters) last Friday. The frame is already up, just need to put glass in and level the place where I will put it. That will be the house for my seed grown Yucca's with are starting to get big.

The other two greenhouse are quite full with plants already. Mostly small miniature cacti, but even if you cram multiple plants in a 8 by 8 cm pot they will take up quite some space... An estimate of number of plants would be in the thousands.

[madkactus]

I started informally buying cacti here and there about 30 years ago. I really had no idea what I was doing and of course they all died due to over watering , lack of sunlight etc. I began ernestly collecting different cacti species and learning about how to care and cultivate them about 15 years ago. My collection consists of about 25 different cacti.

[mmcavall]

I begun serioulsy in 2016, when I joined the forum with a few plants in my collection.
Today my notebook (how do you call the old thing made of paper? notebook...?)...well...In my notebook every new species (or a new plant of the same species, but from different source) receives a number...currently in my notebook I'm in the number 870...so I have about 870 names in the collection. Considering that some died , and that there are also some (few) succulents...I would say I have about 600 different cacti species/varieties.

The seedlings are treated diferently. My notebook "says" that I'm sowing my 1550th pot by now... some of these 1550 have already been incorporated in the 870 names of the adult plants. A big number has died before maturity or is repeated (example tens of pots of Astrophytum)...so the number is much below 1550... I would say I have about 150 new names to be added to the 870 names when they grow up.

I just cant stop sowing !

[zpeckler]

Had the obligatory big box hardware store cacti with the fake flowers glued on for years (golden barrels, random Mammillarias, etc), but none of them survived more than a year or so. In 2015 I decided it was time to get serious about learning how to properly take care of them. Compared to a lot of people on this forum my collection is pretty small because my growing space is limited; I have just shy of 60 cacti. Mostly Ferocactus, Mammillaria, Echinocactus, Echinocereus, and other cacti native to California, the American southwest, and Mexico. I do have a smattering of species from South America, but my preference is for species I could encounter in the wild on my local desert excursions. This year I'm making a major effort to learn how to grow seedings, so I think my collection will expand dramatically... Now I just have to figure out where I'm gonna put them!

[keith]

Around 500 pots of cactus and 100 of succulents and many are smaller seedlings. Number of actual individual cactus and succulents ? 1000 ?

I grew cactus back in the 1970's but all my cactus now started again in 1993 . All the older ones before 1990's I don't even know what happened to them ? I gave a bunch away and some probably died. Old pictures show cactus roasted in full sun no idea what i was doing back then.

[Holunder]

I have about 1 m² of young adult cacti and about 1 m² of cacti seedlings. I started collecting (sowing) end of 2021.

[jnspire]

I have been keeping cacti off-and-on for a very long time.
I started learning about cacti when I was around 10 years old. I am now 38.
So, lets say over 20 years. There have only been a few years during which I didn't have at least one species.

Since then, I have kept over 100 different species, including succulents.

Last September, I moved from Minnesota to Florida. Through that process, I either sold, gave away, or lost all of my stock.
I am now re-learning how to keep cacti in a new climate. It seems the rules are changing a bit.
So, now I am starting over! I currently have about 15 species. My current Grow/Trade list is here (though not everything is listed yet):

https://cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 24#p400424

[Carpkel]

It was nice hearing from all of you