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Summer is very rough on everything here, cacti included. I lose a few every year particularly small ones. This weekend was the big fall plant sale at the Desert Botanical Garden across town. So I bought a number of things to fill in the holes.
Desert plants are tricky to grow. Desert cacti can be bought just about anywhere in the world these days. But it takes some knowledge to make them grow at all, most places. There are also tropical cacti which are more like common house plants and wouldn't make it at all with the same care as desert cacti need.
Buying cacti is a problem. Cacti that sprout outside by themselves and grow are tougher than all get out if they don't get drowned. But few will do that outside of their own native area. Growing cacti from seed inside, works. But it's not completely easy and you always end up with many, many little cacti you have no space for. Commercial-nursery grown cacti on the other hand have often been force grown with fertilizer in greenhouses. They look fine but some of them are badly weakened, just when they should be toughening up. Garden centers buy them from the commercial nurseries and proceed to over water them. A percentage of the pretty green cacti you see in any display in the store are already dying. Keep an eye on the unsold plants over time and you'll see for yourself. Unlike the house plants that would look awful, cacti can have a cheery looking top after the roots are destroyed. Those cute little bowls of assorted cacti in stores almost always have a cactus or two that is already fatally damaged. So the plant is sold, ends up dying and "no one knows why."
Other kinds of plants you bring home, transplant immediately and give a big drink of water right away. Desert cactus can be transplanted if the dirt in the pot is not wet, but never when it is wet. Once they are in their new home they need to sit dry and for at least a week then be watered heavily but not very often (once a week the first year for all of them, once every two or three weeks there after for the larger ones that are no longer in pots).
In most places desert cacti need as much sun as possible, here where I live they usually need shade unless they are big and tough already. Greenhouse grown plants always have ideal shade. Real people's yards here don't. Real peoples' houses don't have enough sun except in south facing windows and leaving the blinds open in the summer to give them lots of light runs up air-conditioning bills. Consequently adapting a nursery cactus to the spot it is going to grow is a tough battle. Even nursery plants that have grown outside have different lighting conditions and it's rare that they don't end up scaring in full sun. A number of them will just die the next time summer comes around. Patios work fine, but the change in the angle of sunlight as the seasons change can sunburn and kill small cactus plants in the middle of winter!
Desert plants are tricky to grow. Desert cacti can be bought just about anywhere in the world these days. But it takes some knowledge to make them grow at all, most places. There are also tropical cacti which are more like common house plants and wouldn't make it at all with the same care as desert cacti need.
Buying cacti is a problem. Cacti that sprout outside by themselves and grow are tougher than all get out if they don't get drowned. But few will do that outside of their own native area. Growing cacti from seed inside, works. But it's not completely easy and you always end up with many, many little cacti you have no space for. Commercial-nursery grown cacti on the other hand have often been force grown with fertilizer in greenhouses. They look fine but some of them are badly weakened, just when they should be toughening up. Garden centers buy them from the commercial nurseries and proceed to over water them. A percentage of the pretty green cacti you see in any display in the store are already dying. Keep an eye on the unsold plants over time and you'll see for yourself. Unlike the house plants that would look awful, cacti can have a cheery looking top after the roots are destroyed. Those cute little bowls of assorted cacti in stores almost always have a cactus or two that is already fatally damaged. So the plant is sold, ends up dying and "no one knows why."
Other kinds of plants you bring home, transplant immediately and give a big drink of water right away. Desert cactus can be transplanted if the dirt in the pot is not wet, but never when it is wet. Once they are in their new home they need to sit dry and for at least a week then be watered heavily but not very often (once a week the first year for all of them, once every two or three weeks there after for the larger ones that are no longer in pots).
In most places desert cacti need as much sun as possible, here where I live they usually need shade unless they are big and tough already. Greenhouse grown plants always have ideal shade. Real people's yards here don't. Real peoples' houses don't have enough sun except in south facing windows and leaving the blinds open in the summer to give them lots of light runs up air-conditioning bills. Consequently adapting a nursery cactus to the spot it is going to grow is a tough battle. Even nursery plants that have grown outside have different lighting conditions and it's rare that they don't end up scaring in full sun. A number of them will just die the next time summer comes around. Patios work fine, but the change in the angle of sunlight as the seasons change can sunburn and kill small cactus plants in the middle of winter!
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The misunderstood "bad boys" of the plant world, lol.
The only cactus I have ever grown was a Christmas cactus; it did fairly well for awhile, bloomed once and then died. It's funny, I have great success with outside plants, not so much with inside ones. (Except for a Boston fern I've had for more than 20 years...I basically ignore it, give it water when I remember, and the sucker keeps on growing!)
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