I dragged my camera out yesterday and snapped a few quick pictures. I reversed a Canon 35-80 1:4-5.6 lens on some extention tubes and presto. The wind was blowing quite hard but I needed the sun for the light so I could see what I was doing. :) Certainly not the best pics ever (quick and dirty)... T...

cheers for that

I still call Stenocactus Echinofossulocactus as this is what Australian Quarantine still lists them as.

George

I couldn't help myself and added a few plants this Christmas. I also have lost a couple in the heat. I was away for two and a half weeks and with my neighbour watering them on the weekends some cacti still desicated. I guess thats what happens with a week in the 40's with very low humidity :( But th...

Wow, those are some amazing plants!

George

The plant seems happy which is wh I am suspect on it being an undatus. We had a week where nearly every day I had to scrape ice off my windscreen and knock the ice off equipment at work. This guy didn't seem fazed at all by it, it is against the house but not under any eaves so there might be some s...

Hi Steve, undatus are grown comercialy as a fruit further north, I was given a cutting last christmas of a cactus a friend had growing in several pots. As she is in an area that gets frosts I had assumed it was not undatus but some other climbing species. I had never realy considered it as grafting ...

Thanks again, and cheers for the compliments. As always if anyone sees a plant I have miss named please let me know!! Onzuka, hopefully I do have a Hylocereus undatus, how do you tell the difference with triangularis? Hopefully we will see some fruit soon (I know nothing about growing these species)...

Thanks for the replies, and yes a had a vauge idea that my saguaro was miss identifies when the buds first appeared #-o the problem is that in the mix of cactus I recieved one is supposed to be a saguaro so somewhere there is at least one mis-identified cactus 8-[ ... Arjen is there any way to ident...

Well 7 months on and things are going well. Most of my cactus survived winter. I lost two to rot, one never settled in and I lost one during winter. It was in an early poting mix and I don't think I put enough gravelmin the mix, although several other cacti in the same pot seem fine. I nearly lost m...

I agree with Dean growing plants is like having cars, you can easily have a runabout that you fill with petrol ang give the odd oil change (like a couple of hardy plants). Or you can get a rece car you pull down after every race and rebuild with super small tollerances. Or anything in between. I hav...

Coral and shell is more alkaline than limestone as limestone is calcite and some corals and shells are aragonite. Although both are calcium carbonate (CaCO3) they have different crystalline structures making aragonite more soluble, which makes it more alkaline. Coral also has a much larger surface a...

I to am interested in the effect of water hardness GH (not KH) as well. KH is easy to controll with pH buffers but GH won't go anywhere so how much can cactus withstand? I don't like to use anything with a GH of over 50ppm on my carnivorous plants. Should I worry about using hard water on my cactus?...

I have a Cylindropuntia that I decided to pot up before I knew what it was... Bad idea... I got a finger jab, which of course pulled it from its new pot and sent it flying I instinctively grabbed it as it hit me shin... fortunately my wife heard my scream. Lots of blood. She had to pry it off my han...

I have dried the mix off sightly and have left the bags of astros open and everything seems happy now.

I did notice this Ferocactus today, is this normal and will go green, or will it need to be grafted due to lack of chlorophyl?
Cheers
George

I am not surprised people have troule growing carnivorous plants, after all the biggest killer of carnivorous plants is bad advice, and there is way to much of that out there! I have read VFT tags saying keep out of direct sun!!