Piante grasse cactus spine

Tag: sowing

Sowing cacti: how to prepare plants for the first winter and the “trick” to help them in the first few months

For any plant enthusiast, whether succulent or not, planting is an extremely important point of arrival. An arrival point which, in many cases, soon turns into a starting point which accompanies the enthusiast for most of his life. It is undeniable that there is no comparison between a purchased plant and one we have seen born, grow and develop from a tiny seed, even more if we have collected that seed from one of our plants. This is somewhat the “magic” of sowing: closing a circle born of a flower with another flower, the one produced by the plant originating from that first seed that we have been able to germinate, become a plant and lead to full maturity. And all this without going into detail about the satisfactions that are obtained by trying to select particularly interesting species, from flowers of unique colors to peculiar or almost unique thorns or stem shapes. As regards the procedure for sowing cacti and succulents, many novice growers “get lost” in the proverbial glass of water right after the phase least subject to our control, i.e. germination: we cannot in fact force a seed to germinate, although there are good practices that favor the birth of plants.

For many, however, the critical issues begin after that moment, that is to say in the first months of life of the plants, which are indeed delicate months because the seedlings are still weak and easily subject to rotting or parasitic attacks. It is above all to these growers that the following article is addressed, with a little “trick”, to be understood as advice, on how… to make life easier for seedlings and how to let them pass the first winter unharmed. (…)

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Here is the story of an Echinocactus grusonii born to lose but alive to win!

Would you throw away that specimen of Echinocactus grusonii you see in the photo above? Obviously the answer is no. Indeed, with such perfect thorns it would be a crime to let such a plant die. Nevertheless, a few years ago, when that plant was still a few months old seedling, I was about to throw it away! No, I hadn’t suddenly gone crazy, simply this plant, around 2015, was just one of the many grusonii seedlings obtained with a particularly lucky sowing (that is, characterized by high germination). What you see in the picture was the only seedling born from that sowing to have reached the stage of the first repotting in pitiful conditions, to the point that, convinced that it would not even pass the first repotting, I intended to throw it together with the sowing soil. Today, almost ten years later, that malformed, underdeveloped and sickly-looking seedling has become exactly as you see it in the photo I took a few days ago.

Here, in the following article, is the story of this plant, a plant that has been able to teach me an important lesson: never judge a book by its cover. In life as well as when dealing with Nature. (…)

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Strange combinations of Nature: how did an onzuka end up in the pot of an old Thelocactus?

When many plants are grown in a relatively small space such as that offered by a greenhouse (however wide it can be), it can often happen to discover welcome surprises in the pots. Cacti whose flowers have been pollinated naturally by insects or self-fertile cacti, capable of doing everything by themselves, produce fruits which, once dry, split letting the seeds fall directly onto the soil at the base of the plant. This is how one can find specimens of a certain age surrounded by seedlings or small plants, in a sort of “potted” re-proposition of what commonly occurs in nature. In spite of what one might think by observing the precise procedures necessary for the reproduction of cacti, spontaneous sowing is a common phenomenon in cacti and is sometimes able to give real surprises, as has happened to me these days.

Here is a small report in the following article. (…)

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How to clean cactus fruits and how to store the seeds to reproduce our plants

Reproducing cacti starting from seeds is one of the best ways to get to know these plants in depth. Through sowing we can in fact observe the entire life cycle of the plant, from birth to the production of the first flower, to aging and death. Without forgetting the great satisfaction that the birth of seedlings is able to offer to those who practice sowing for the first time as well as those who have practiced it every year for decades. Not to mention the first flower: getting to see that the plant that we have given birth from a small seed, after two years or after twenty years depending on the species, finally opens its flower… it is priceless, there’s little to do. But before getting to all this – with regard to the sowing procedure, remember that on this site there is an entire section with at least fifteen articles dedicated to this topic at this link – you need to get the seeds. Banal, obvious. But without those you go nowhere. And there are two ways to get the seeds: buy them from specialized retailers (now almost exclusively online) or produce them with the manual pollination of your own plants. Or… simply collect the fruits that our plants have produced thanks to some pollinating insect, accepting the fact that two plants not of identical species may have been pollinated (and therefore we will be dealing with future hybrids), clean the fruits, store them and sow them in the spring.

In this article and in the related video we see how to clean and prepare the seeds for storage for future sowing. We sholud always remember that the seeds must be stored correctly, on pain of deterioration of the seeds and the consequent drastic drop in germinability. (…)

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Sowing cacti and succulents: what to do when the first little plants are born

Ok, between one drop and another of condensation inside the bag we can see some tiny green dots. The seeds gave birth to the first seedlings, in short, our baby cacti. And now? How do we proceed with the sowing of cacti and succulent plants after the first germinations? Should we open the bags right away? Should we keep the seedlings in full light or is it better to place them in a sheltered place? Should we water regularly the seedlings or it’s better to let the potting soil dry out? And, finally, can we fertilize?

In this article, let’s see what to do once the seeds of cacti and succulents have germinated, in other words how to move correctly to help the plants grow and avoid making the work done with sowing in vain. (…)

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