"Tales From the Cacti Cube"

IXOXI that pere graft is cool I will have a go at one one day

My success rate was good a while ago and then it dropped to about 50%. I think I have worked out were I went wrong. Mainly I was over confidant I was using stock that wasn't at its best and my technique got sloppy so I went back to basics , slowed down and kept everything sterile and I seem to be back on track.

You didn't answer my question about pot size I am asking because I have recently gone down to 85mm square pots but I would like to go smaller to save on space but I am unsure what size pere's will still be happy in.

Cheers
Midlife

IXOXI I am speechless, it looks like a Peres jungle !
And the Astro - tree....

@ midlife
I got a similar problem with Astrophytum and Ariocarpus grafts. They just sit there and do
nothing whilst others grow rapidly.
Cause i haven´t got Pereskiopsis so far (maybe U can help me out with??) I graft on
Selenicereus and Hylo of different age and size.
I blame the lack of routine and uniform grafting stock for the poor success. It makes every graft different and I got not enough practice to handle it.

Cheers Snah

@ midlife - the Peres does just fine in a confined space. I have tons of it growing in test tubes of water and most of the ones in this next photo are all 20-30cm tall, but growing in 40mm sq pots, packed over 100 per tray! By the way they are greener then what you see here, this yellowish colouration is due to the photo being done from my mobile phone.



@ Snah

Quote :

Wed Nov 14, 2012 1:02 am

IXOXI I am speechless, it looks like a Peres jungle ! And the Astro - tree....

I find that funny as I call it the Pereskiopsis Forest. And yeah I have numerous multigrafts like that. Sometimes only one scion takes off and gets enormous while the rest don't grow, but don't die off either.

When you get time IXOXI, would it be alright if you take a snap shot of one or two of your other multiple grafts? I can't get enough of those sort of grafts!!

Beautiful photo's everyone. I can't seem to upload any of my photo's and when I'm physically on a computer I don't have a camera handy, only at home.

~Kandahar

IXOXI Wow you have a lovely setup! I can only imagine that your time would be very busy.

Ha, Thanks, yeah it keeps me on my toes! Funny part is that it is just my hobby. One that sometimes will consume entire days in a row, but I enjoy almost every bit of it. When I go into the cube and shut the door, I am surrounded by the plants. The fans in there do a nice controlled breeze, and it is very very peaceful. I often wander into it thinking I'll just go in and check the germi8nation trays, or look at the overnight growth of some of the grafts and next thing I know hours have gone by...

I can imagine.!

Quote :

@ midlife
I got a similar problem with Astrophytum and Ariocarpus grafts. They just sit there and do
nothing whilst others grow rapidly.
Cause i haven´t got Pereskiopsis so far (maybe U can help me out with??) I graft on
Selenicereus and Hylo of different age and size.
I blame the lack of routine and uniform grafting stock for the poor success. It makes every graft different and I got not enough practice to handle it. Embarassed

I can help you with a couple pere plants which you could use as you mother plants once they get going. I cant give you any ready to graft pieces atm as I am about to use a heap and I am a bit behind with my propagation of my pere stock.
Could you spare a piece of the Selenicereus so I could grow it as stock. I have one that I have propagated enough to start using it to see what its like but it looks different to yours.

Quote :

@ midlife - the Peres does just fine in a confined space. I have tons of it growing in test tubes of water and most of the ones in this next photo are all 20-30cm tall, but growing in 40mm sq pots, packed over 100 per tray! By the way they are greener then what you see here, this yellowish colouration is due to the photo being done from my mobile phone.

That is really cool that the pere's can handle the small pots. I presume they are in a standard square pot and yours are looking very healthy. If you don't mind answering more questions I have a heap more about your whole setup including how you grow your peres and look after them once the scion is grafted. I think I said before that we are working in very similar environments. My space looks a fair bit smaller than yours mine is like a over sized cupboard that is in my shed that you can walk into. There is only cacti inside and all of the rest of my stuff that goes along with this hobbie is in the shed proper.
I will read back through the thread and come back with some questions if that's ok with you.

Cheers
Midlife

@ Midlife - Sounds good, I am happy to answer any questions you have, as best I can.

I was visiting a friend today, and he was showing me his current trays of seedlings, when disaster struck - He was putting them back and caught the corner of the table with the main tray, all of the seedlings got dumped out of their containers. It all landed badly, so everything was all mixed up, but among the dozen types of cacti growing in there were Thelocephala sp., Copiapoa
sp., Lophophora diffusa, Mammillaria humboldtii, Blossfeldia lilliputana and Lophophora jourdania.
He was so upset by this that he was going to just put all the pile into the bin. I decided to try and sort it all out. So the last couple of hours have been sifting through the pile and attempting to sort the seedlings out by shape, size and colour...

Ha! I got a malicious chuckle out of that, not because I'm evil, but because I've been there and done that twice about seven years ago with two trays and many hundreds of Ariocarpus seedlings. Took me a few months before I could even look at my cacti again. My wife said they were all done for and to chuck em but I sieved them all out and trayed them up again.
Seven years later and I am still trying to differentiate between bravoanus from scaphirostrus, and cultivars from species.
I've done it many times since. Nowdays when it happens I just think 'Bloody typical!' and I consider myself lucky if it happens less than once a year.... touch wood!

I had it happen to me almost a year ago to the day. Three shelves of Lithops, amounting to about 4000 seedlings. Top shelf collapsed, landed on the second, etc, then once all 3 were sandwiched, they tipped over forward and landed upside down. 99% of them popped on impact. Took weeks to dig the survivors out, still have no idea a year on which are which. And it was a good 2 months before I could even bother with any of them again - I very nearly gave up my whole collection at the time.

A couple of photos of some of the Ariocarpus growing in the Cube.

A. lloydii


A fissuratus cv. Godzilla


Same one, side on:

Nice gz! He'll grow up to be a beautiful monster!

I am really hoping so. I have a second one that will grow slower, but should be impressive none the less, since it is developing multiple heads

Ok I am back

I have just rebuilt my grow space so now I have double the shelf space and I have bought eight hundred odd 50mm squat tubes which I have kept about six hundred for myself.

So now I am ready to start propagating pere and grafting on a lot larger scale than I have previously.

Here go's the questions.

What soil do you use for your pere ?
I changed from a standard potting mix to a high coir mix a while ago to try and reduce gnat problems but I am not happy with it so I am due to make another change.

What lights are you using for your pere propagation and for your grafts and at what height are the lights from the tops of the grafts / pere's ?
I am using 4 foot fluros cool whites for the pere's and daylight and NEC Biolux for my grafts. The shelves that I have my grafts on have 3 fluros and the ones with pere have 2 fluro's. My shelves are 1200x 400.

How do you water and how often do you fertilize ?
I try and bottom water every couple of weeks and and use a small watering can with a extended spout for my regular watering. Bottom watering has got a bit easier now most of my pots are in trays so I can do a tray at a time.

What sort of temps does the cube get to during summer and do you have fans moving air inside the cube ?
I did have a small fan running just to keep the temps even but I have recently turned it off because I think it was drying everything out two quick especially my seedlings.

I am also interested in your thoughts on this.
We talked about the heights of our pere grafts a little while ago and I have decided to do all of my grafts at 250mm from the bottom of my pots so they are all a uniform height. So if my pots are 75mm high my pere's should end up being about 180mm high from the soil.

If you have any other thoughts or suggestions please post them. I really want to get my area dialed in as I have a lot of seed I am going to put down when it is.

Cheers
Midlife

@midlife - Peres isn't too fussy so Amgrow, or Osmicote cacti soil works fine for them (and not much else!). I have multiple lighting setups, each has their own benefits. You can best experiment to see what works for you, without causing too much of a heating issue. I am currently watering 3 times a week, though I change that depending on what season I have my cacti in. Fertilize once a fort. Temps currently 30 day/20 night. Yes, fans cycle 15 mins on, 15 off. ALl my seedlings are in humidity chambers of various sorts, or in plastic bags, so drying out is not an issue.

In other news... 12/12/12 at 12:12:12 an auspicious time to set down some seeds today. Finished the rabbit / mouse wire around my tunnel, and am nearly done with the slug & large insect mesh as well. Hail netting is in place and the door is on. Have started putting cacti into the tunnel as well.
Will post a list later of some of the seeds set down.

That's a fine set up you have there. Looks like you are getting some great results!

I've wondered about growing cacti under lights myself. So i do have a couple of quick questions. Apologies if you've answered these earlier. I did read through the thread but I could have missed it.

How far apart are the fluoros? I'm guessing that you'd want them pretty close together.

And also, how many hours of light per day do you give them?

thanks!

I'll have to do some current photos, but one of my Ariocarpus has gone from seed to 4cm in just half a year. I have a number of light set ups, and each is tailored for different results. I can't get into too much detail because there are some processes that I am doing that have not been done before, and the end result should be pretty spectacular.
I suggest doing some experiments to see what you come up with, as different plants react differently to each kind of lighting, amount, duration, intensity, etc.

Sounds interesting - trying out different light setups that is.

The type of results you are getting are pretty inspiring. I'm an inveterate tinkerer, so I think I might have to have give this one a bit of a go!

Problem is that I have to move house. Maybe a small portable setup using compact fluoros.

I dunno,its getting kinda late!

cheers

@Charlie - This whole setup of mine is inside in a 2m x 2m space. Theres over 3000 cacti in there. It would not be too difficult to build something similar which was modular or at least able to come apart easily for transport.

I did make a small set up yesterday. Its pretty basic.

I found a large aluminium parabolic reflector. And a 40w compact fluoro (supposedly equivalent to a 150 - 200 w regular bulb). A timer. And stuck it all together!

I got some seedlings, put half under the light and the other half are outside on the verandah.

Its on a 16h 'daylength'. So far so good, though it does seem to be drying the soil surface . Prob have to raise the light. The tweaking begins!

cheers

For my general growing zones in the cube, 16 hours is the normal lighting duration, so you are going well there.

IXOXI wrote:

I was visiting a friend today, and he was showing me his current trays of seedlings, when disaster struck - He was putting them back and caught the corner of the table with the main tray, all of the seedlings got dumped out of their containers. It all landed badly, so everything was all mixed up, but among the dozen types of cacti growing in there were Thelocephala sp., Copiapoa
sp., Lophophora diffusa, Mammillaria humboldtii, Blossfeldia lilliputana and Lophophora jourdania.
He was so upset by this that he was going to just put all the pile into the bin. I decided to try and sort it all out. So the last couple of hours have been sifting through the pile and attempting to sort the seedlings out by shape, size and colour...

Been there before !! Man that sucks I would have done the same thing and thrown them in the bin in anger. Lucky your a good friend and helped out as most if not all of them would have survived it would just be a difficult job sorting them and re-planting..

I managed to save just over 450 seedlings. Some will be a while before we know what they are. I am going to graft around 50 of them so that we can identify some of them sooner.