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RE: 🌸 Desert.plants.passion / Spring flowers (4)
Ohhhh more and more.. I am almost afraid to ask how many cacti do you have?
Love the first Rebutia marsoneri- gorgeous flowers and a very nice pot ;)
And Mammillariae candida... I don't any f those very white ones (yet). I tend to get mealybugs on my plants and I am afraid that on those white I simply wont see them on time.
And Echinocereus rigidissimus for it's shrimpy colour and hedgehog appearance :)
And I see you have Dragon balls too :p
Hhaha Well, I don't know how to count? Every pot? Every cactus? Every species? All ssp.? All var.? Not all authors agree about ssp. and var.! If I count all species what should I do with so many Lithops that I do not know exact name? ... There are about 1000 species, but I have to count them again this year... Maybe there are more of them.
The pot is hand made of tiles adhesive and newspapers. :)
When it comes to mealybugs there is very practice solution... Use mineral soil and keep cacti on place with good airflow then they won't come. I was reading about how mealybugs avoid plants planted in mineral soil and I can confirm that from my own experience. When I was using bought soil for cacti or was mixing soil of peat, molehill and sand... I had problems with them, and that was really annoying.
When I started to use mineral soil they never come back again. Only problem that I have is red spider mites-- usually I have one plant a year under attack, and that is is negligible...
Oh I dunno :D But that tells me you have lots :p
I have some aeonium plants that I keep on an open balcony, one is in a hanging basket so I'd say there is a lot of air flow and I keep getting mealybugs on them. So frustrating!
You mix yourself mineral soil, or it is possible to get it somewhere? That is so cool! I will have to try it :) Thank you. Now you are my cactus guru :p
I have planted my Aeoniums in mineral soil, and there is no bugs of any kind! I had cacti on balcony also, a small one where I kept about 700 species. Three years ago I have moved in a house so now they are outside, waiting for a glasshouse to come. And when I kept them on balcony they had no mealybugs since I planted them in mineral soil.... (before that it was invasion and I had to use insecticide regularly).
I see you're living in Portugal.. I live in Croatia where most of the land is clay, but still I managed to find a place where is perfect soil for cacti- containing very small green, blue stones, and about 10% humus! Than I mix it with zeolite. I'm sure!!! that you can find some mineral soil in Portugal also. That soil from nature will be the best choice. But if you have no time for that you can buy pumice, zeolite, vermiculite...
For more info read this: http://xerophilia.ro/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/The-Stone-Eaters.pdf
That is the best written article for cacti soil.
Wow, thank you! I guess this will be mu mission for this summer. Find the right soil and repot the babies :)
So basically the more stones and other kind of pebbles the better. I have been mixing some regular shop-bought soil with perlite and lots of sand for them.
"a small one where I kept about 700 species" - wow!!
Yes, the more stones the better, but not any kind of stones. Nor any kind of sand. Perlite is ok. Just read that link, that guy really understood the point of cacti soil.
The shop-bought soil is the worse for cacti. Only young seedlings will appreciate it, for the rest use just anything else. Heavy clay is also not recommended.
Oh yes, I did manage to tuck them in, but was collecting only small growing species. Yet this year I'm sawing some columnar cacti. Now I have enough space :)
Yes, I read to that part that if we don't know what to use... more stones is better than more organic material. That is already a great tip (looking towards one baby that probably rotted).
I have 2 columnar cacti. But I prefer the smaller ones and the barrel ones that can grow to massive sizes.