New temporary outdoors cactus garden

Well, I don't always put half that much work into some 'permanent' things that I do.

Well, the original post was of the temporary bed Just a 1.2x0.6meter rectangular thing. This one will be extremely permanent I'd say!
Finished filling in the path around the bed today and once again changed the layout somewhat With the few left over edging brick I have I'll add a third layer to the wall in the back corner, I'll have to regrade it somewhat but ought to end up better in the long run.

Ahhhh that makes a bit more sense now!

Glued down the additional bricks today, regraded and shifted the rock feature somewhat to tie in with the new raised bit.
And then I ran headfirst into somewhat of a problem....the plants I had selected just won't bloody fit!
The way I have them set out now likely means it will be overcrowded like crazy in a few years time even with taking 8 plants out that I previously had earmarked for this bed, they are just going to have to stay in pots for now.






Likely a good thing I took some of those plants out though, guessing T. pasacana, T. candicans, T. terschecki and P. schumanniana potentially could get a tad big for a small bed like this. Got enough big growers in there as it is I suspect!

wow it looks great.

Thanks, pretty darn stoked with the result myself to be honest. Remains to see how the plants will do in the long run though.
Spent a few hours today planting them all in, bit hungover this morning so I got started to late in the day to keep out of the sun and heat. So right now I feel kinda worn out and have enough spines in my hands to last me a lifetime!
Leaving it for a little while before I add some topdressing, rather leave it bare but with so much sand in the soil it splashes up on the plants whenever it rains.

Virtually the same look as yesterday but now without pots and somewhat less offsets on some plants, biggish Echinopsis in the last photo above lost them all.






And what can happen when you forget the importance of hardening off a plant before putting it out. This one had been in the temporary bed with no harm for well over a year but I had to take it out 2 months back, forgot to let it adapt and just fired it in before christmas. One sunny and warm day was all it took to do this.

Wow, it's coming along great!! Well done!

Mostly everything seem to of survived the recent heatwave we have had the last week or so, though I did have to put up some temporary shade structures in order to take the worst bite out of the sun.


The one that to me doesn't seem like it will make it, although it feels like one that should of managed, is the O. celcianus. It's a yellowing mess of sunburn even with all it's hair and some insectscreen shading.


I'll leave it in anyways just to see if it can come back from that damage but I have a feeling I'll be looking for a replacement sooner rather than later.

Instead of covering in a layer of rocks, you grow a low creeping herb like thyme that doesn't mind it dry? I take it you still water it a fair bit?

Also you could plant some Drought hardy small shrubs to provide some cover for the cacti I think that would look great! Then you would have the whole ecosystem going, well not all of it...

Also wanted to say, the white hair on the O. celcianus may not be to protect it from sunshine but rather to direct more sun light into the cactus surface. I know it sounds counter intuitive but polar bears have this, the white hair reflects light inwards to their black skin which in turn absorbs the heat effectively. If they had black hair the hair would absorb the energy but due to the thickness of the fur this heat would be passed inefficiently into the bears skin.

At any given time a cactus has 100% of the sunshine hitting potentially less then 50% of its surface. This fur could in fact alter it to say 70% sunshine on 70% of the surface. Too much sun causes damage so the plant probably wouldnt mind decreasing intensity a little. It also would create a boundary layer that would decrease transpirational losses due to wind.

Well, I aim to water as sparingly as possible. Preferably not water at all if natural rainfall is enough to keep the plants sustained.
Since planting them in they have had 2 drinks, one supplied by me during the worst of the heat last week and another supplied by mother nature the other day.

Low growing shrubs or grasses might just be an idea rather than rock topdressing, though I'd rather combine the 2 into a somewhat natural look. Might look into what kinda grasses or shrubs would be appropriate and if they can be had around these parts.

You get heaps of rainfall in syd, just looked up the averages, ~1200mm/yr.That gives you plenty of options.

I have a hatred of rock mulch from removing tonnes of the stuff when I was younger when my mum changed her mind about a garden and wanted it gone. So I'm biased.

Well, depends alittle on where in Sydney you look at the average though. Weatherzone claims 1214mm's of mean rainfall for Sydney, out west in the Penrith area where I am the same number is 752mm's so it's quite a bit less. Also think I'm acctually getting less than Penrith as I've noticed a tendency for thunderstorms that hit Penrith to somehow skirt my suburb and pass with only light rainfall rather than a drenching.
Plus the good thing is that we tend to get less rain during the colder months.