CactiGuide.com

Hello everyone!

I decided to start a new thread so I wouldn't spam Loph thread anymore.
Here are some seedlings that I currently have under grow lights. My grow lights are now 2 LED 6500K bulbs with some 3000 lumen output, roughly. It's cheap and improvised, but it works amazing.

Under the images you will be able to read genus, species, sowing time and more info that I have or think is relevant.

I am expecting your feedback and suggestions.

Have a nice day!

Funny you went through the trouble of counting them. I just call that "one batch of seeds".

I don't even bother. I just sow them.

Aeonium2003 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 3:33 pm I don't even bother. I just sow them.

Aiko wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 12:45 pm Funny you went through the trouble of counting them. I just call that "one batch of seeds".

There was something in me that didn't let me have peace until I counted them.
My counting method is weird, but I took a high res photo, opened it on my computer, in MS Paint and circled them in groups of 10, then counted the groups. Sure, it took some time, but there is no way I would count the real seeds, those are smaller than 1mm!

Very nice seedlings! My favorites are the Sclerocactus seedlings.

metsolt wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 4:55 pm There was something in me that didn't let me have peace until I counted them.

I understand this too well. It was slightly annoying not counting my self-harvested seeds, but there were hundreds of them. Then I remembered about an image analysis app I used in school several years ago for a materials science class and after a little research I found some guides on using it for counting particles.

The program is ImageJ and is open source and free to use.
You can download or use it through your web browser at https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/index.html.
You can find some instructions on use for counting here and here. Basically, you upload an image, crop it to include only what you want to count, convert to greyscale, "tell" the software what to count by highlighting through the "Threshold" function, and analyze.

Accuracy does depend on image quality though, and you may need to do some processing, like blurring or separating seed clumps (either manually or automatically). For instance, I analyzed your seed image and the program returned a count of 264 rather than the 286 you counted.

Just something you can play around with if you're interested.

T. pachanoi seem to be doing well, as I expected it. I can't wait for it to start growing faster soon! The only thing is, I reused a pot with soil in which I tried to grow E. missouriensis var missouriensis and they wouldn't germinate at all, but now when I had sowed TP, Escobarias started popping up like crazy, just to mess with me...

L. williamsii is a loner from that batch so I decided to give it to someone who was looking desperately for one. I'm gonna keep it with me until May or so, when the weather will be milder on shipping and also it can grow a bit stronger by then.

Mammillaria are doing quite well, although they're quite dramatic when they're thirsty. Not what I expected.

The next one are Gymnos, judging by the seed color and size, they're 2 species, but they're too young to tell which one they are. I have a question regarding that pot: How problematic is the orange growth? I don't know if that is rust or not. I don't think it's been affecting the seedlings in any way, I don't see any dead seedlings or any with infected tissue. What do I do here?

And finally the pot that took forever to establish. These G. baldianum and G. mihanovichii kept failing in their batch so I tried to bring them back to life and after many months they look healthy and decent. Also, they're so well rooted in this pot, I couldn't believe it. No amount of pressure will make them move, even though I had cut their roots significantly before putting them in this pot.