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I didn't know this species had 100% germination rate on seeds? for some reason I thought it would be less. Looks like I planted a few too many !

Oh, well - they're small.

Anyway, you won't know if you planted too many until you see how many survive. Looking good so far, but getting them to sprout is the easy part.

My thought, when I saw your pic (After having a few solitary plants in-ground, praying they'd survive another upstate Winter, & to hold me over until cold-hardy seedlings I started growing the last couple of years finally have gotten large enough to put out this year) -- you have an entire cactus bed just waiting to get big! This has become my whole strategy now -- forget the 5 yr wait for offsets, self-plants, etc., just grow a whole bed of them! . I am SO looking forward to this Summer & the new cold-hardy/boulder beds! As GK said, germination is the easy part -- but even recently I've had several batches of No Shows, so obviously 1 important step crossed!

Yes how many will be left in 5 years when they start looking like real cactus ?? 10 years when I can sell the extras ??

Past experience would say about 15 ~20 plants out of hundreds but we will see.

Starting to dry them out I have removed the plastic covering. Its been 18 days I think all of the seeds have germinated. 100% it looks like I don't remember that many seeds !!

I will still water almost every day but only a piece of window screen will be over the pot this way I hope to prevent fungus growing and messing up my pot. They are inside the house now in a South facing window that gets maybe an hour of sunlight a day. Probably in a month or so I will put them outside with the other seedlings from last year.

This is a little better seed sowing there is room around the seedlings. These are Mammillaria herrerea v. albiflora seed from my own plants. Looks like 100% germination yea!!

Also started April 1st and am starting to expose them to dryer air. I had another pot of Turbinicarpus but it went bad with a hairlike fungus so I threw it out. I have 2 more pots I sowed a week later and am just starting to see germination in the M. Plumosa pot. And another pot of Ariocarpus but no sprouts yet.

Next 3 months are the tricky months for tiny seedlings balancing water with dryness with shade and sunlight.

What kind of a mix is that? It looks like aquarium gravel almost.

Escobaria minima doesn't grow all that fast, so you won't have issues with crowding for a year or two. If you had ferocacti coming up that close together you'd be potting up in a month!

Just the top is fine sand particles I shifted out from larger gravel found on the side of the road out in the Mojave. They do look kind of Aquarium up close.

My Ariocarpus are up and so is the second try of turbinicarpus alonsii which are very small and tricky to keep the wet dry balance of cactus seedlings. The fine gravel I'm using which you can see in the pictures is not fine enough for such small seeds I think.

Maybe I'll germinate some more stuff this weekend ..

Some recent cactus seed germination - lets see if I figure this out posting multiple pictures..

The set-up Outside in California. They all stay in here for many years until I add them to my larger cactus collection. 70% shade cloth plus they are under a Ginko tree.

Finally germination on Echinocactus horizonthalonius and some other stuff mostly epithelanthas. This time I used sandpaper on the seed coat of the Echinocactus.

I think I have some echinocereus in there too? I guess I'll find out in a few years. I usually get poor germination on the Echinocactus so I mix other stuff in there so I don't waste space.

The big chubby ones are the Echinocactus

Thats some set up you got there, propper seedling factory.

Are you sure the big chubby ones aren't the Echinocactus?

Echinocactus horizonthalonius


Thanks Dan