Sowing Mammillaria Glassi cactus seeds

My little furry Mammillaria Glassi produced this year some lovely red fruits full of seeds. What better way do with then, than sow them? Would be such a waste to just throw them away, right?

She bloomed earlier this year with super tiny and super cute pink flowers flower post here. And this is how the fruits/seed pods look like. Pretty impressive and much more showy than the flowers.

One I picked few weeks ago (the completely dry one) as it matured the soonest. The rest today just before sowing.
_{/Quick switch to phone shots as it's faster and I have sowing to do!/}

Time to butcher them and pick the seeds. It's not hard, just need a toothpick or some other thin tool to gently scrape them from the inside of the fruit.

I rubbed the seeds gently between two pieces of tissue to remove the excess of fruit pulp and let them dry for about an hour. It might rot in the high humidity pot later on. The less fruit bits the better.
Some people go further and wash the seeds in gentle bleach solution. I will not bother. This is fine for me :)

While the seeds dry, time to prepare the soil mix. I make my own after being told many times by experienced cactus growers that the crappy soil from the garden and sand is better for cacti than any ready made cactus mix you buy in a shop. So I mixed a large portion of sand with all kinds of rocks I found in the woods, small portion of all purpose compost, some garden soil, some lava rocks and some crushed clay beads I had.

Since I use the soil and sand picked in the wild I sterilized it in a Microwave to kill whatever might be living there - fungi, bugs, eggs and larvae. You never know what might want to much on your little babies later on.
The mix might look rough, but its good this way - it provides fast drainage and enough air to the roots.

I got two small pots (besides Glassii I had another seed pod from some Lobivia I wanted to sow too), put some rocks on the bottom, filled with the mix and shaked it a bit to get all the bigger chunks on top and remove them. The seeds are tiny and they will do better in finer mix. Soaked the pots in water, then sprinkled seeds on top and added just a tiny tiny bit of sand on top of them.

And that is it. Now add tags in case I have brainfart and forget what I sowed and stick everything in clean zip-lock bag. This is gonna be their tiny green house. It will provide enough light and high humidity for the time of germination. I will keep it closed until they stop germinating.

I left the bag on a window sill but out of direct sunlight and will just make sure they have the soil moist and no fungi or algae start to grow.

That's all.
Now we wait. Probably 7-10 days to start to see something happening. Fingers crossed :)

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_{Shot with Nikon D5500 + Sigma 105mm lens
All photos and text are my own.}

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