Bosenoge grows cacti!
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:38 pm
After many years of lurking through the forum, especially this section, I decided its time for me to contribute to this beautiful place for cacti lovers!
My sowing adventures started in winter of 2016, so the oldest seedlings I have are now 2 years old. Thanks to all the useful information I found here I managed to keep many of them alive and so I present to you my sowing efforts so far!
Many thanks to all the posters in this section, especially to:Hanazono, Wilk, Kristian Fossmo, which growing diaries inspired me to sow my own cacti. Two years in the hobby, I am a proud owner of a couple of thousand seedlings At the start I wanted to go big. First, because at the same season I started growing from seed I got myself a new greenhouse which is now only half full, so space is not a constraint. Second, I got hooked! To the point that I now look for new cacti to buy in pairs hoping for sometime to get my own seed of everything in my collection
So lets review stuff season by season, since there is many cacti to view(to the point that I decided not to document everything because there is too many), and I am constantly modifying my method.
Sowing 2016.
Started in October with 60 packets, which was maximum I could fit in my state-of-the-art propagator:https://www.gruenteam-versand.de/romber ... s-complete
Sowing substrate:
70% pumice 0-4 mm
20% sifted soil for seedlings
10% lapillus 1-4 mm
Later I added a layer of diatomaceous earth(kieselghur) 1-3 mm, as a top dressing, which I still use. The seedlings are in covered propagator under the capillary matting, so 100% humidity all the time.
Lights on-14 hours a day
Temperature:
28-30C daytime
18-20C night
This is how things looked like at the beginning. Species sown? Many. Mammillarias, Notocacti, Echinocereus, Sulcos and a few slow growing species like Ariocarpus, Aztekium, Strombocactus and the like. Initial germination was about 65%, with some but not many losses in initial stages of growing. Anybody interested in exact numbers should look at my diary on a Croatian cacti forum, which I decided to abandon since the forum is dead:http://www.cvijet.info/forum/forum_post ... aa-kaktusa .
After about 6 months, the seedlings are going out in the humidity boxes, again under the capillary matting, as seen from Hanazono
In April of 2017. I started another batch of 60 pots, since the propagator was now empty. Those were also put out after a month in the humidity box at the most shaded part of the balcony.
Come winter, I moved everything back in the house, again under the lights and heat, because i saw that people tend to have significant lossess in their first overvintering and I wanted to avoid that. So, my first sowing was kept under constant humidity for about a year without repotting. I made some calculations and I thought that two additional propagators would be enough to acommodate all, but that was not the case , so I had to postpone my winter sowing.
1st reppoting
Seedlings are repotted in from 5cm to 10cm square pots, 25 per pot(thanks again Hanazono!), a couple of species per pot. That year I learnt that you shouldnt mix look-alike cactus in the same pots because it takes some time to show differences in the same species. So now I am a proud owner of two species of lophophora(williamsii, friccii) which I cannot telll exactly which is which
Can anybody help?
Substrate-I added another 10% of soil so for the first repotting I used:
70% pumice
30% garden soil
Cacti was repotted in wet supstrate which stayed wet for at least two weeeks.
The pots were taken from the humidity boxes and in the spring I moved them under the shelves in the greenhouse. I continued with bottom watering, which takes time with a 1000 or so seedlings, but that way I evaded disturbing the still small seedlings. Under the sun things started to grow and in the summer of 2018 I started to repot them again as they started to crowd in the community pots, some individually and some in the same pots but with bigger spacing.
2nd reppoting
Substrate:
100% mineral, or
60%pumice
25%lapillo
15%zeolite
I decided to go all mineral with all my cacti so the seedlings were the first to try it! Reading more about cacti, I converted to all mineral mix, and time will tell if this will be a final modification of my substrate. I continued with bottom watering, and my first sowing efforts are safely overwintering in my hallway, cold and dry for nearly three months! I didn't made a final count , but by the look of them, survival rate was excellent between 1st and 2nd repotting so I must be something right
The look at the communal pots. Most of the cacti from the second batch(sown April 2017.) are still in this setting.
Some Notocacti from my own seeds after 2nd repotting.
Lessons for the next season:I had no major problems with germination, especially since everybody gets the same treatment, so no tweaking the setup for harder species. I wasnt satisfied with the growth rate after the first 6 months, so I thought maybe do my 1st repot a little sooner?
Here are some of the oldest sedlings and their growth through time:
1.Mammillaria longimamma
2 months
6 months
14 months
2 years(almost)
2.Lobivia famatinensis
3 months
6 months-they were in the communal pots above.
2 years
3.Rebutia pygmaea
elongated from the start, as are some Sulcos, I dont know am I doing something wrong or they are just growing like that?
2 months
6 months
2 years - I buried half of the stem because it was too high and I stil got this
Next:Sowing 2017....
My sowing adventures started in winter of 2016, so the oldest seedlings I have are now 2 years old. Thanks to all the useful information I found here I managed to keep many of them alive and so I present to you my sowing efforts so far!
Many thanks to all the posters in this section, especially to:Hanazono, Wilk, Kristian Fossmo, which growing diaries inspired me to sow my own cacti. Two years in the hobby, I am a proud owner of a couple of thousand seedlings At the start I wanted to go big. First, because at the same season I started growing from seed I got myself a new greenhouse which is now only half full, so space is not a constraint. Second, I got hooked! To the point that I now look for new cacti to buy in pairs hoping for sometime to get my own seed of everything in my collection
So lets review stuff season by season, since there is many cacti to view(to the point that I decided not to document everything because there is too many), and I am constantly modifying my method.
Sowing 2016.
Started in October with 60 packets, which was maximum I could fit in my state-of-the-art propagator:https://www.gruenteam-versand.de/romber ... s-complete
Sowing substrate:
70% pumice 0-4 mm
20% sifted soil for seedlings
10% lapillus 1-4 mm
Later I added a layer of diatomaceous earth(kieselghur) 1-3 mm, as a top dressing, which I still use. The seedlings are in covered propagator under the capillary matting, so 100% humidity all the time.
Lights on-14 hours a day
Temperature:
28-30C daytime
18-20C night
This is how things looked like at the beginning. Species sown? Many. Mammillarias, Notocacti, Echinocereus, Sulcos and a few slow growing species like Ariocarpus, Aztekium, Strombocactus and the like. Initial germination was about 65%, with some but not many losses in initial stages of growing. Anybody interested in exact numbers should look at my diary on a Croatian cacti forum, which I decided to abandon since the forum is dead:http://www.cvijet.info/forum/forum_post ... aa-kaktusa .
After about 6 months, the seedlings are going out in the humidity boxes, again under the capillary matting, as seen from Hanazono
In April of 2017. I started another batch of 60 pots, since the propagator was now empty. Those were also put out after a month in the humidity box at the most shaded part of the balcony.
Come winter, I moved everything back in the house, again under the lights and heat, because i saw that people tend to have significant lossess in their first overvintering and I wanted to avoid that. So, my first sowing was kept under constant humidity for about a year without repotting. I made some calculations and I thought that two additional propagators would be enough to acommodate all, but that was not the case , so I had to postpone my winter sowing.
1st reppoting
Seedlings are repotted in from 5cm to 10cm square pots, 25 per pot(thanks again Hanazono!), a couple of species per pot. That year I learnt that you shouldnt mix look-alike cactus in the same pots because it takes some time to show differences in the same species. So now I am a proud owner of two species of lophophora(williamsii, friccii) which I cannot telll exactly which is which
Can anybody help?
Substrate-I added another 10% of soil so for the first repotting I used:
70% pumice
30% garden soil
Cacti was repotted in wet supstrate which stayed wet for at least two weeeks.
The pots were taken from the humidity boxes and in the spring I moved them under the shelves in the greenhouse. I continued with bottom watering, which takes time with a 1000 or so seedlings, but that way I evaded disturbing the still small seedlings. Under the sun things started to grow and in the summer of 2018 I started to repot them again as they started to crowd in the community pots, some individually and some in the same pots but with bigger spacing.
2nd reppoting
Substrate:
100% mineral, or
60%pumice
25%lapillo
15%zeolite
I decided to go all mineral with all my cacti so the seedlings were the first to try it! Reading more about cacti, I converted to all mineral mix, and time will tell if this will be a final modification of my substrate. I continued with bottom watering, and my first sowing efforts are safely overwintering in my hallway, cold and dry for nearly three months! I didn't made a final count , but by the look of them, survival rate was excellent between 1st and 2nd repotting so I must be something right
The look at the communal pots. Most of the cacti from the second batch(sown April 2017.) are still in this setting.
Some Notocacti from my own seeds after 2nd repotting.
Lessons for the next season:I had no major problems with germination, especially since everybody gets the same treatment, so no tweaking the setup for harder species. I wasnt satisfied with the growth rate after the first 6 months, so I thought maybe do my 1st repot a little sooner?
Here are some of the oldest sedlings and their growth through time:
1.Mammillaria longimamma
2 months
6 months
14 months
2 years(almost)
2.Lobivia famatinensis
3 months
6 months-they were in the communal pots above.
2 years
3.Rebutia pygmaea
elongated from the start, as are some Sulcos, I dont know am I doing something wrong or they are just growing like that?
2 months
6 months
2 years - I buried half of the stem because it was too high and I stil got this
Next:Sowing 2017....