15 years this plant flowers, the flower dry up and fall off. This season it flowered, half of the flowers dried up and fell off the other half left behind these.. Are these seed pods? And if they are when do I remove them.
Thanks
IMG_20200614_114257.jpg (141.84 KiB) Viewed 640 times
IMG_20200718_130920.jpg (151.56 KiB) Viewed 640 times
IMG_20200718_130927.jpg (135.81 KiB) Viewed 640 times
IMG_20200718_130930.jpg (133.74 KiB) Viewed 640 times
IMG_20200718_130942.jpg (130.16 KiB) Viewed 640 times
IMG_20200718_130945.jpg (126.9 KiB) Viewed 640 times
Yes, those are the developing fruit of your cacti. Before you are able to harvest the seed, you will need to let them mature. Normally, there will be a color change of the fruit. I do let the fruit remain on the plant, until it starts to shrivel a bit. The seed will be OK most likely, even if you let the fruit remain on the plant until next year. I wonder, why during all the previous years the cacti dropped the flowers without a fruit developing. Somehow, you must have had some pollinators (bees, flies, hummingbirds, etc.) visit the cactus blossoms earlier this year.
I'm in the process of selling my house and I had to move all my cactus to different locations throughout the garden 2 months ago. Most of the collection went from a lower deck to an upper deck /balcony that receives more sun throughout the day. The change in growth of all the cactus after moving them has been exponential. This particular plant moved from a middle deck to a different upper deck only 5 feet away. There is shade due to large Oak Trees and Fruit trees. So some sun in the morning, some sun midday and finally continuous and more intense sun in the afternoon. It is tucked in with 6 other cactus and closer to my fruit trees. Maybe since it is no longer in the open, the critters of the trees felt more comfortable visiting the plant during blooming season. All the plants in this location have also shown some increased growth.
This plant is one of my oldest and most prolific growers so harvesting seeds later will be fun.
Here it is 1 year ago. And now that I have gone back and looked at older pictures there was some fruit on it. They never matured.
IMG_20190811_072106.jpg (108.33 KiB) Viewed 614 times
One other thing that has changed after the plants were all moved is an increase in watering. Also I have been adding diluted fertilizer with every watering . So that may have contributed to the increase of fruit and growth rate. I've just gone through 18 new larger pots and 2 large bags of soil doing a repotting of plants that have outgrown their pots. 4" to 6" and 6" to 8". Most of the 3" moved up to the now empty 4" pots.
