Should I give this to my cacti

[WayneByerly]

I bought some Discorea sylvatica x elephantipes, planted them and 70 days after I put the seeds in the ground, the seller of the seeds tells me that he has plants that are five years old that do not have as much growth that mine do at less than two months. Wow! So I'm reading about how to take care of these things and I read something that says that if I want the caudex to grow at a fast rate, then I need to give them a high-nitrogen fertilizer. Doing a search on Amazon, I find some stuff called Blood Meal that will give me a 12-0-0 formulation. So I buy some of this stuff to give to them. But I've only got six seedlings. So what do I do with the rest of this Blood Meal? So I gave some consideration to giving some of it to my other plants. I've got some Pachypodium (8 or so of them), some Euphorbia (6 - I'm particularly fond of the ammak), a couple of Agave (8), and an assortment of succulents (21) ... and hey!, maybe even give some to my cacti (89).

Anybody have anything to say on the subject? How about you Steve Johnson? I can't even imagine that you don't have some valuable point of view on this. I'll go listen to some Carlos Santana while I'm waiting ... or maybe some of "The Piano Guys" ... I'll be right back ...

[Steve Johnson]

Not sure about succulents, but cacti want low Nitrogen. If you added Blood Meal to the Dyna Gro Orchid Pro, you'll end up with bloated unnatural-looking plants.

[WayneByerly]

oh man, am I GLAD I asked this question ... I guess I can just stick to putting this on my Pachypodium and my Dioscorea.

Thanks Steve ... as usual, i get the Real Deal from you ...

[Steve Johnson]

Thanks Steve ... as usual, i get the Real Deal from you ...

Always a pleasure, my friend! I'll have some updated info on the Dyna Gro ferts which may come in handy for you and anyone else who use either the All Pro or Orchid Pro. By the way -- there is some detail involved, and while I won't have enough time to get into this now, I'll post the update over the weekend.

[WayneByerly]

... I'll have some updated info on the Dyna Gro ferts which may come in handy for you and anyone else who use...

I look forward to seeing it with great anticipation... You always post the best stuff... Scientific studies, educational, informative, accurate, and most of the time NECESSARY info. I find that i'm really disappointed when you haven't posted anything major in a while. I REALLY enjoy your stuff. I've always admired people that are very competent in whatever they do... and I still think that you fit into that category, but in this field.

Oh, BTW... Just in case you've paid any attention to our discussions about the use of Akadama and have given any consideration towards using some of it. I've cut back on my Akadama use... so that it is NO MORE than 25% of my mix... It was holding too much water... AND, it is softer than I like. So I've ordered more pumice and a 25lb bag of chicken grit (granite) on top of that because the pumice also holds too much water (although not as bad) and I've got to do something about cutting down how much water my pots hold. I've got a small table in my greenhouse where I put seedlings and small cacti, and they all get the same water treatment. Same sun, same air movement, same temperature... and the same water... and two of them died of too much water. I know they all have their own individual requirements, but for crimminy sake... sometimes I just don't know what to... heavy sigh... never mind. Look forward to seeing your new info.

[greenknight]

As for what to do with the extra blood meal - it works great for growing salad greens, makes for lush growth of spinach.

[WayneByerly]

hi spence ... nice to hear from you again.

i've got SEVERAL Pachypodium ... and i've read somewhere that this blood meal will cause their caudexes (caudex, plural ... spelling?) to get big ... so I think THAT is where i will probably put the stuff ... SLOWLY over time. cause i'm not growing any greens right now ...

... and i LOVE my pachys ...

[Steve Johnson]

Hi Wayne,

Before we get into the "meat and potatoes" here, I just wanted to tell you that a lot of what I've learned about cacti comes from good teachers I've been blessed to know through the forum. I firmly believe in giving credit where credit is due, a good example being Darryl Craig of CoronaCactus Nursery who I've mentioned a number of times in previous posts over the years. A much more recent example is our Australian member MikeInOz -- coming up on 9 years since I joined the forum, and he's the first professional horticulturalist who can explain fertilizers in a way that's both detailed and understandable. I'll freely admit that my understanding of ferts came from limited knowledge, so I can't thank him enough for expanding it. Now, I want to make sure that I get the facts straight, so I'll be quoting directly from the source, and as we go along, I'll add my own 2 cents of commentary and advice for whatever it's worth.

You'll find the thread that started this conversation here:

http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewtop ... 24&t=44939

Scroll down to page 2, and that's where my well-meaning but misguided opinion about proper NPK balance was in serious need of correction:

http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewtop ... 15#p377330

Next, we'll pull out what I call the "money shot" quote from his post:

I forgot to mention also that in the US they use the old ''percentage of Phosphoric acid (P2O5) and percent potash'' (K20)) when they quote P and K in the fertilizer.
So when you buy a 10-10-10 fertilizer in the US you are actually getting N10-P4.4-K8.3 of the actual elements. The rest is oxygen, hydrogen and stuff like that.
I checked out the Dyna grow 7-8-6 and they use this system here too. So the actual elements you are giving your cacti are N 7 - P 3.5 - K 4.9. My comments about ratios refer to the actual percentage of the elements so I would now consider the P in the Dyna grow to be good but the N too high and the K too low!

Okay, so we have an imbalance between Nitrogen and Potassium. Quoting from another one of his posts in pone's thread, and this bit of information is crucial:

You want the K about 1.5 times the N...

There's an excellent way to bring the N and K into proper balance, and we can do it with Potassium sulfate -- easily available online. Since I'm using the Dyna Gro All Pro 7-7-7 and Wayne is using the Orchid Pro 7-8-6, we'll go through the numbers and come up with the right amount of Potassium sulfate we'll need to supplement each fert. For the Orchid Pro, we already know that the percentages of N and P are good, so we'll need to bring the K up to 10.5. For the Potassium sulfate, we'll go with 0-0-50. If you supplement 1/2 teaspoon of the Orchid Pro with 1/8 tsp. Potassium sulfate, the total percentage of K will be 11.2 -- a much better N-to-K balance, and I don't think there'd be anything wrong with the higher K. (You can eyeball it and add slightly less than 1/8 tsp. if you'd like.) Dilute them in a gallon of water, and the actual amount of nutrients the cacti need will be just right.

Now we'll look at the Dyna Gro 7-7-7, which is actually N 7 - P 3.1 - K 5.8. The percentages of N and P are also good, but we still need to bring the K up to 10.5. If we add 1/8 tsp. Potassium sulfate, the K will be 12.1 -- too much. If we bump down to 1/16 tsp., it'll be 9 -- not enough. Oy! But if we add 1/16 tsp. plus 1/32 tsp., we'll nail it with a K percentage of 10.5. Where in the heck would we get measuring spoons that small? Try Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Mini-Measuring-S ... 229&sr=8-8

A little bit goes a long way, and I can't imagine anyone needing as much as a pound of Potassium sulfate. If you're looking for a smaller quantity, you can find it in 3.5-ounce packets on eBay here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Potassium-Sulf ... SwAbxebYaY

This is 0-0-52, close enough for our purposes. Believe it or not, Sulfur is an important minor nutrient for cacti, and the trace amounts we get in the Dyna Gro ferts aren't sufficient. Here's what Mike had to say about it:

S deficiency shows up as general paleness. A lot of cacti grow in very high gypsum soils (calcium sulphate) so you can imagine how much S is available to them.

Potassium sulfate gives us the added benefit of providing Sulfur to our cacti, and he mentioned that Sulfur toxicity is very rare. Wayne, if I remember correctly, you water your plants with well water. Unless the water already contains Sulfur, I don't think you'll have any problems. As far as NPK imbalance and nutrient deficiencies are concerned, it often takes years before these problems eventually catch up with us. I just started supplementing my Dyna Gro 7-7-7 with Potassium sulfate, and while it's too late in the growing season to see anything dramatic yet, I'm already noticing small signs of improvement here and there. I'll look forward to seeing a lot more of it over the course of next year's growing season. If you follow my advice, hopefully the results will be good for you too.

I find that i'm really disappointed when you haven't posted anything major in a while.

Yeah, I know -- time has a bad habit of getting away from me, and it seems like the faster I go, the behinder I get. Nice thing is that I'll never run out of new material for the forum, so I'll chip away at some of the backlog soon. Regarding your suggestion about Akadama, I decided to pass given two operating
principles -- don't mess with success, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. With that said, I appreciate the thought.

[greenknight]

A little blood meal goes a long way, too - quite a high concentration of N. Can't burn the roots because it's not in soluble form, it has to be broken down by bacteria before the N becomes available, but that happens relatively fast compared to a lot of organic fertilizers - it will gradually release N for 1-3 months.

Make sure that it's stored in a rodent-proof place.

You still do have time to plant a fall crop of greens.

[WayneByerly]

... For the Orchid Pro, we already know that the percentages of N and P are good, so we'll need to bring the K up to 10.5. For the Potassium sulfate, we'll go with 0-0-50. If you supplement 1/2 teaspoon of the Orchid Pro with 1/8 tsp. Potassium sulfate, the total percentage of K will be 11.2 -- a much better N-to-K balance, and I don't think there'd be anything wrong with the higher K. (You can eyeball it and add slightly less than 1/8 tsp. if you'd like.) Dilute them in a gallon of water, and the actual amount of nutrients the cacti need will be just right.

Hi Steve ... I hope this post finds you healthy and safe. Would you mind if I reminded you that you were going to send me pictures of some mature plants that your mother had received as a gift? I've lived this long without them, so I guess if I never get them no harm will be done, but I thought you might not mind that I reminded you.

Do you remember Monty Python? If so, do you remember the skit where he was complaining (with an odd screechy voice) that his brain hurt ... and that he needed a brain doctor?

That's how I feel. I suffered a small amount of brain damage from my motorcycle accident 24 years ago ... I was a computer programmer, a software developer, and I never forgot ANYTHING ... now I need a calculator to do BASIC math, and I carry a drivers license so that I can remember my name.

So let me make SURE that I get what you are saying. I'm having trouble even thinking about this. I have TWO questions here. The quantity of the OrchidPro needed AND the quantity of the Potassium Sulfate required for two gallons of water.

I usually mix my water in two gallon quantities, because that is the size of my sprayer. I'd mix it in larger quantities if I could because it generally takes three "full sprayers" of water to water everything in the greenhouse ... I give them enough that water runs out of the bottom of my pots. I hate to waste the fertilized/pH adjusted water by letting it run out on the ground like I do, but I'm 67, and a chronic pain patient (just out of the hospital with some problems) so I can't afford the energy usage of picking up the pots individually and dipping them into a large container of water, letting them drain, and THEN putting them back down ... and SOME of them are too big and heavy to want to have to pick them up TO BEGIN WITH!). It's all I can do just to make the three 40' trips to the greenhouse to water everything!

So ... per gallon of water ... 1/2 tsp of OrchidPro? Since I have a graduated syringe (sans needle) that I got from a doctor so I could measure liquid amounts, 1/2 tsp of OrchidPro is 2.5ml (round to 1 decimal place cause it's actually 2.46).

Question A: So for two gallons of water, I need 5ml of OrchidPro?

But the Potassium Sulfate that you recommend (that I JUST got through ordering from ebay) is a dry powder. I can't use my syringe.

Question B: So for TWO gallons of water, I need SLIGHTLY less than 1/4 tsp (I would call that a "scant" 1/4 tsp) of the Potassium Sulfate powder? I also ordered your recommended measuring spoons ... i had NO idea that anything like that existed.

So that's my understanding of what I NEED to do for fertilizing my pH adjusted (5.2-5.5) water? And now that we're talking about fertilizer and watering cacti ... can I use this same fertilized/pH adjusted water to to "treat" my other plants ... My Pachypodium ... and my Euphorbia?

I keep in mind that most of what we talk about in our care of our cacti and other xeric plants are the General Rules (specifications?) for cacti care, and that some species have very different Species Specific Rules that differ slightly and sometimes significantly from the General Rules ... but sometimes it's just a tad difficult for such an old/decrepit fellow like myself to do the necessary research on all of my 125 (or so) pots. And that sometimes that "equal treatment under the law" can result in fatalities. Witness the recent death of TWO of my cacti that were being given equal treatment as all of the other cacti around them ...(cacti on a table of SMALL plants ... seedlings and offsets and the like).

FINALLY, to all members who read this ... be careful when you are out driving. You don't need so much to watch out for what you are doing ... although it's a darn good idea in my opinion ... but you DO need to watch out what the other guy is doing.

Because it only takes ONE fool-in-a-hurry-to-get-somewhere-not-CAREFULLY-watching-what-they-are-doing to ruin the rest of your life! Be careful boys and girls ... stay safe ... and may Our Creator's munificent bounty follow you all, all the days of your lives~

[DaveW]

Not my subject being a Cactophile Wane, but found these articles on fertilisers for Discorea species, but obviously in the first case they were after maximum commercial growth:-

https://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=ja.2006.492.496

https://worldofsucculents.com/grow-care-elephants-foot/

[WayneByerly]

THANKS Dave

That first one was SO full of stuff that I was unfamiliar with, that it was like trying to read a foreign language ... backwards ... blind in ONE eye ...

But the second led me to a place that leads me to believe that caudiciforms will benefit from SOME KIND of application of high nitrogen fertilizers. Pachypodiums, Dioscorea, yams, potatoes, etc.

VERY welcome information, and I don't think I would have ever found it. Thanks everso for your time and your regard ... thanks loads ...

[Steve Johnson]

Would you mind if I reminded you that you were going to send me pictures of some mature plants that your mother had received as a gift? I've lived this long without them, so I guess if I never get them no harm will be done, but I thought you might not mindthat I reminded you.

Hi Wayne,

I will email you with photos of the most recent succulents you sent to my mother, but it has to be low on my list of priorities for the time being. Please bear with me (no reminder needed -- I have an excellent memory), and I'll send you up-to-date pics later this year.

Since you're whipping up 2-gallon batches of your watering solution, you can be a little more precise about how much of the 0-0-52 Potassium sulfate you'll need to add. First, you are correct about diluting 5 ml. of the Orchid Pro liquid concentrate in 2 gallons of water. Now, here's where your mini measuring spoons will come in handy for that precsision. Add 1/8 tsp. plus 1/16 tsp. plus 1/32 tsp. of the Potassium sulfate, and that gives you a total K value of 10.4 -- so close to 10.5, your plants won't even notice the difference. (By the way, I need to get a set of those spoons myself.) Potassium sulfate is water-soluble, so amounts that small will dissolve easily in your 2-gallon batches. I should also mention that the measures should be level, not heaping. While the Dyna Gro ferts do lower the pH of the water a little bit, Potassium sulfate doesn't, so the amount of acidifier you use shouldn't be any different now than it was before. If you keep the final pH of your watering solution within the 5.2-5.5 range, you'll be set.

And now that we're talking about fertilizer and watering cacti ... can I use this same fertilized/pH adjusted water to to "treat" my other plants ... My Pachypodium ... and my Euphorbia?

Acidified water has significant benefits for cacti and succulents, so they should all be treated the same in that regard. The important things is -- we should never over-acidify the water. Once again, if the final pH of your watering solution doesn't go below 5, you're fine. With regard to the specifics of the fert regimen I'm recommending for cacti, my guess is that it also applies to succulents. However, I have pretty much zero experience growing succulents, so I'd be hesitant to say yes. As all of us should know, general rules come with exceptions, and it's up to the individual grower's knowledge and experience to know what those exceptions are.

[WayneByerly]

You still do have time to plant a fall crop of greens.

Maybe, but I'm just out of the hospital, and am not doing as well as I would like. Maybe this next spring. That would give me time for SEVERAL crops of greens. Hmmm ... would it be good for yellow squash, do you think?

[greenknight]

Squash are heavy feeders, but if you go too heavy to nitrogen you could get a lot of leaves and not much fruit. Might work to use a little bit around the young seedlings to promote fast early growth.

Sorry to hear you're not doing great.

If you've got any space in your greenhouse, you could grow some greens in pots. Maybe a mesclun mix, snip some off with scissors whenever you want to make a salad. You could have fresh greens all winter - the extra nutrition couldn't hurt.