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I have been growing cactus here at my house since 1974. I use benches for cactus in clay pots. I live about 30 miles north of Baltimore, md. My green house floor is concrete. My question is how difficult would it be to take out all the benches and plant the cactus on the floor with soil of course. Would this be a good idea or not. Any problems with this idea .

I would say, keep the greenhouse.

I think he means keep the greenhouse but remove the benches and replace the concrete floor with soil.
I would suggest to keep it like it is. Removing the floor will be a big job and you will loose space. Perhaps replacing the benches would gain you some room.

Thanks just a wild thought on my part ha

I have sort of a compromise in my GH: lots of shelves but also two raised beds at either ends ( over a gravel floor ). I use the beds for cactus that I thought would benefit from a freer root run. The bed for the saguaro is about 2 ft deep but I dug out the Jersey sand down to the foundation level & filled with my usual mix, so it can go deeper if it wants. Not sure if I did the right thing; too soon to tell. Sue

oldcat61 wrote:I have sort of a compromise in my GH: lots of shelves but also two raised beds at either ends ( over a gravel floor ). I use the beds for cactus that I thought would benefit from a freer root run. The bed for the saguaro is about 2 ft deep but I dug out the Jersey sand down to the foundation level & filled with my usual mix, so it can go deeper if it wants. Not sure if I did the right thing; too soon to tell. Sue

Looks like a great idea....but what happens when it gets too tall, is there enough room as far as height gives?

Lee wrote: Looks like a great idea....but what happens when it gets too tall, is there enough room as far as height gives?

You remove the roof over it. http://www.zaslike.com/files/qa8bf2aih6w5p99bvpe6.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; I have seen it done.

I would be ever so happy to live long enough for the saguaro to hit the roof. Sue

Uau, nice arangement in yours GH! I like combination of different placement of cacti very much.

Maja, can you imagine, how strange would people look if one day a giant saguaro look out of the roof in our place, where everything except apple tree or geranium seem to be strange and odd?

AgavaSK wrote:Maja, can you imagine, how strange would people look if one day a giant saguaro look out of the roof in our place, where everything except apple tree or geranium seem to be strange and odd?

Most of them don't even differ cacti from other succulents... so I guess It would be like an UFO flying around if a Saguaro hit the roof and lift it up to see what is happening in a neighbourhood.

I have a long 2ft deep by 2ft wide centre bed in my greenhouse built up off the concrete floor, raised up with concrete blocks, but the greenhouse is 9ft high to the ridge. I just chopped a few drain holes in the concrete below the bed before I built it. Depends what you want to grow bedded in since a 4ft Trichocereus bedded in started to put on about 18 inches of growth a year and soon reached the ridge and had to be cut down. Plants in pots are Bonsai'd and with free root run will grow very much faster, therefore you have to decide whether you want to bed Cerei in and have to chop them down within a few years, so a lot can depend how much greenhouse space you have available.

Also smaller growing plants bedded in at floor level can be a back breaking job to keep bending down to look at, that's why I chose a raised bed. I believe some of the Continental collections do replant their beds every year, re-spacing plants as they grow. Whether they all replant or just submerge the pots and top-dress over them I do not know. I believe De Herdt does this, see his raised beds here:-

http://www.cactuspro.com/forum/read.php?1,199106,199106" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Must confess De Herdt's beds look far too neat and well spaced for the plants to be permanently bedded in.

DaveW wrote:I have a long 2ft deep by 2ft wide centre bed in my greenhouse built up off the concrete floor, raised up with concrete blocks, but the greenhouse is 9ft high to the ridge. I just chopped a few drain holes in the concrete below the bed before I built it. Depends what you want to grow bedded in since a 4ft Trichocereus bedded in started to put on about 18 inches of growth a year and soon reached the ridge and had to be cut down. Plants in pots are Bonsai'd and with free root run will grow very much faster, therefore you have to decide whether you want to bed Cerei in and have to chop them down within a few years, so a lot can depend how much greenhouse space you have available.

Also smaller growing plants bedded in at floor level can be a back breaking job to keep bending down to look at, that's why I chose a raised bed. I believe some of the Continental collections do replant their beds every year, re-spacing plants as they grow. Whether they all replant or just submerge the pots and top-dress over them I do not know. I believe De Herdt does this, see his raised beds here:-

http://www.cactuspro.com/forum/read.php?1,199106,199106" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Must confess De Herdt's beds look far too neat and well spaced for the plants to be permanently bedded in.

Dave how does this effect the watering of plants, is it difficult to judge? I live in the northeast so watering can be a problem if too wet and cold.

Strange to say deep beds dry out quicker at the surface than pots on the staging do. With deep soil, unless there is a hard pan layer, the water quickly sinks to lower levels below the plants neck and most roots. In fact the perched water table effect that has been discussed elsewhere. In fact Graham Charles, an English grower, told me he has more trouble keeping his greenhouse beds wet than he does the pots.

Obviously if you have a bed at ground level into the native soil it will have the same water level as the surrounding ground and if that floods so probably would the bed.

My beds are about 2 ft deep over a pea gravel floor. I used an open weave weed mat to keep the soil mix from filtering down into the gravel. Have only had this setup for just shy of a full year, so I'm certainly no expert. The hylocereus undatus hit the roof but is now branching nicely on its way across the GH. Sue