A few days ago I was checking to see if the guys that are still in my dirty mix have dried out ( I was sticking a toothpick in the soil) and after 7 days of 30C plus degrees(86 F) in my conservatory, the soil was still wet! Especially wet in some of them. I thought there's something wrong and decided to take the risk and take them out of the pot to check the roots. I took the Echinocereus rigidissimus and the Gymno mihanovichii out first and they just came off the soil
There was barely any roots in there... They didn't have too much to begin with when I repotted them last year. Then I checked underneath the top dressing of all of them and discovered a few that I thought to have been repotted in pure mineral mix were actually still in dirty mix, and because it has been so warm I was giving them sips in between waterings
I am lucky they're still alive. Decided to take all 15 of them and repot them in mineral mix.
Most of the Mammillarias were fine though.
Now since I started watering in March, I've been giving them full drenches every 7 days, and that combined with the fact that I repotted them in 30 August last year, probably took its toll on them. I think I will go on a every 2 or 3 weeks watering from now on and see how it goes. I would rather see them shrivel a bit than loose them.
Unfortunately also found root mealies in some of the pots
On another note, I managed to pollinate my G. baldianum flower with the pink flowered G. damsii, and when the flower died, the stalk didn't fell and it was visibly getting fatter day by day. Then, yesterday morning, I checked on it and it was deflated and dry. I blew softly and it just came off
I have 0 experience with pollination, and this is my first year when I tried to pollinate my cacti, but that night it got down to 10C (50F) in the conservatory, and I'm wondering if that's why the fruit was aborted. I dissected it and it looked full of undeveloped seeds
Well, I guess better luck next year.