The "summer that wasn't" gave way to nice, sunny and warm (sometimes hot!) weather in fall going all the way through the Christmas-New Year's holiday. When the long-range outlook for SoCal indicated an unusually warm, dry winter starting in January, I got the bright idea for screen-capturing my weekly weather charts so I could look back at observed temps. My climate in winter is very different from what many of you experience, and it took me a long time to figure out that up until recently I wasn't making the most of the opportunity. First my January weather chart in handy-dandy visual form:
Next, here's February:
That's winter??!!?? Yep, only in "la-la land"! The bulk of SoCal's rainy season lands squarely on winter, so a diverse outdoor collection is likely to experience losses among cacti that won't tolerate more than occasional light watering when they're dormant. It was very unfortunate to see California go through a severe drought this winter, although there was nothing I could do but be a bit thankful that I didn't have to resort much to the portable GH I had rigged up for protection from the rain. Of course, strategically timed sips would've been nice, although one of our experienced SoCal growers on the forum finally corrected my long-standing and mistaken assumption that desert cacti invariably need to stay dry during their winter dormancy. Hmmm, I'll have to remember that the next time my cacti go dormant. In the meantime, rain? What's that?
SoCal got just a touch of drought relief with some big rains that went through on the cusp of February and March. Here's what came out:
Nice, but we could've used a lot more. Anyway, the one occasion when I really needed my portable GH most also happened to be the point when the plastic sheeting was in the process of degrading after 2 years of on-and-off UV exposure outside. Even a thorough patch job with mylar tape wasn't quite enough to prevent a few leaks from getting through for some unscheduled watering that dripped down on a fair number of the plants. However, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as several of the leaked-on cacti plumped up in a pretty big way. Trying to time the exact start of the growing season can be a challenge. Generally speaking, I'll tell you that it's sometime in early March given L.A.'s climate. Thanks to a happy accident with the failing GH, I was able to peg this particular time more accurately with the events I describe here.
Since March is done, here's a look at the weather chart encompassing the official first day of spring:
If that chart could be described as a psychological condition, it's -- bi-polar!
At least there's a decent chance of rain in my forecast this week, and for once the timing is perfect to let rainfall do some spring watering for me. I've given you an extended taste of what I have in mind for the hint later, so without further ado I give you...Winter Shriveling/Spring Plumping
All the cacti that stayed dry from the big rains were ready for a good soak on March 8. I get a kick out of putting together before-and-after photo sets, so let's have a look at what happens when examples go from winter shriveling to spring plumping. Unless noted otherwise, the befores are from a few hours before first watering, and the afters are a week later. We won't expect to see more than a little growth here and there this early in spring. What we'll be concentrating on is to find out if the roots of these plants are waking up enough for the response I'll hope for
now -- plumping. Some of the before-and-after pics will test your powers of observation, while others are going to be pretty obvious. My personal favorites this time are the cacti that go from splat to fat in one easy lesson. Okay, I'll show you some new growth along the way too.
I'll lead off with a few cacti that have been with me the longest, my "veterans" that formed the nucleus of the current collection in 2011.
Astrophytum capricorne senilis.
Copiapoa hypogaea, really sad because I lost a big, beautiful one to rot when I watered it more often than I should have during the "summer that wasn't". All I could do was go into disaster recovery mode as I was able to save all the pups. I selected "pick of the litter" for myself, and I found good homes for the rest with a couple of active Long Beach Cactus Club members. Here's the best one right before it was ready for transplanting on 8/20 -- with a big, fat taproot and a smaller pup attached:
How's it doing now? The answer is pretty awesome:
The pup got to be the new parent, the smaller pup being right in front. Look closely behind it -- that's a brand-new pup which just popped its tiny head out of the top dressing about 2 weeks ago. The latest from yesterday demonstrates that the newest pup is definitely growing!
I'm so pleased to see the new parent hypogaea starting a brood of its own. The other pup I saved in August came with only a few small roots, although I'm also pleased to report that like its sibling, it went from splat to fat after first watering. Those roots must've started growing in rather quickly, and my personal forecast is that the disaster recovery effort should show a lot of progress over the rest of the growing season.
Gymnocalycium ochoterenae ssp vatteri.
Tephrocactus articulatus papyracanthus. When I got my paper-spine Tephros from the California Cactus Center in June 2011, I was growing them along with the rest of my CCC plants in the cactus mix they sell. Then I discovered the forum in November of that year. As a result of spending some productive time there, I also discovered a pretty big problem with the CCC's mix -- too much soil and not enough drainage without adding a lot more pumice to it. Darryl at CoronaCactus recommended trying a soil-less pumice and decomposed granite mix. I haven't looked back since, and for the most part it's been one of the smartest moves I could make. With that said, the paper-spines failed to do anything in the same pumice-DG mix that did wonders for the rest of my cacti over the 2012 growing season. Well, it turns out that the really fine root systems on Tephros can't be supported for good growth in a coarse mineral aggregate. Okay, then back to the drawing board and adding soil to the mix again. I repotted my Tephros in a 50/50 mineral-soil mix a year ago. 3 months later, the paper-spine pushed out 3 new stems -- the first sign of growth in who knows how long. Fast forward to the end of this winter, and I figured that the roots wouldn't be ready to take up water until the weather really warms up in June. However, Tephros are darn near impossible to kill, so no harm with giving the paper-spine a soak just to see what happens. Here's the before-and-after:
Oh yeah, the roots are taking up water already. The stems from last year should start growing again soon. Then there's the other paper-spine I call Jr. That was a stem that fell off the main plant 2 weeks after I got it. I thought Jr. should be easy to root, although after changing it from the CCC mix to mineral mix, all I had to show for were a few long, straggly roots. Into the 50/50 mineral-soil mix it went going through Jr.'s 4th repot. A fair assumption was that it would take the growing season to build a healthy root system almost from scratch before I'd see any activity on top. Now this part of the story is pretty neat. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but Jr. got some rainwater leakage from my portable GH. 4 days later, I was pleased to see that it was pushing up a new stem of its own. This before-and-after represents a week's worth of new growth:
Isn't that something? Wow!
Turbinicarpus pseudomacrochele. 1 of 2 lovely old Turbs I got as "legacy" plants through the CCC coming from Woody Minnich's old Antelope Valley Cactus Data Plants collection. Rainwater leakage perked it up rather well. And actually, I think it was a little more than jut a sip. I haven't tried doing a 3-panel before, so let's see if this works -- on the left as the pseudomacrochele clearly showed its winter shriveling in mid-February, in the middle 4 days after its unscheduled watering, and on the right 2 weeks later. Looks to me like the plant continued plumping after getting just the one taste of water:
Even if the 3-panel concept didn't work out very well here, I'll use it again with a couple other cacti that should produce a more dramatic outcome. The other "legacy" Turb is my schmiedickeanus klinkerianus. Since it stayed dry under the portable GH, here's a before-and-after that should be more noticeable:
Even the unusually cool weather during the "summer that wasn't" wouldn't deter the klinkerianus from producing a pretty new pup. And the pleasant surprises won't stop coming -- I just detected another new pup only a week ago!
You'll see this wonderful "veteran" cactus again in my spring flower review toward the end of June.
I have only a few 2012 cacti to show you this time. Aside from the paper-spines, here's my other Tephro. That's articulatus inermis, AKA the pine cone, or what we more colorfully call the "cat turd" cactus:
As with the paper-spines, the pine cone seems to be doing better after I changed it over to the mineral-soil mix last year. I hope to see the appearance of new stems in May if the weather stays nice and warm from April on.
The pine cone was from the CCC, the other 2012 cacti here came from CCN. Stenocactus zacatecasensis:
Over my first 20 years in the hobby, I believed that getting cacti outside of the growing season window wasn't a good idea. However, I don't think it matters much anymore, so I decided to give it a shot when I purchased an Echinocereus rigidissimus rubispinus, my first Frailea (a castanea), and a Gymnocactus ysabelae from CCN in December 2012. As 2014 continues to be a year of firsts, I showed you my ysabelae as a package shriveling/plumping and first flower deal here. The story about my experience with rubispinus is more complicated...
While the genus is generally trouble-free, rubispinus is a beautiful cactus that broke my heart twice after I found out that it's the most difficult Echinocereus to grow. Darryl gave me some excellent advice going into it, so the 3rd time was indeed a charm as my latest effort started growing for me in June. The species tends to lose its roots if it's not treated right, and I was a little nervous about how well it would do getting the rubispinus through winter. Would the roots wake up out of dormancy? Here's proof in the pudding:
Don't see any heartbreak in my immediate future. Better yet, I just saw this over the weekend -- the "belly button" fuzz on top means that my lovely rubispinus is starting to grow again!
The flowers on the species are drop-dead gorgeous. The only time I got to see one was right before effort #2 rotted on me in early July 2012. Since I have a rubispinus that likes what I'm doing, I'll be on the lookout for a bud or two in April or May depending on how warm the rest of spring is. I'd just love to see more of those flowers again!
The last of my 2012 cacti has turned out to be remarkably easy -- Frailea castanea:
I don't know why that white schmutz clings to the spines like that, but nothing to worry about since the castanea is healthy. With that nice dark center, I think the plant will grow up and out enough to look more presentable as it gets bigger.
This brings us to my 2013 cacti. The festivities started when I lucked out with a Pelecyphora strobiliformis I won through TimN's eBay auction last April:
Pelecyphoras are difficult to find as grown plants here in the US, so that was a really good score. The following cacti were my summer finds...
Copiapoa laui.
Mammillaria hernandezii.
Sulcorebutia arenacea -- the species loves to flower early and often:
You haven't seen it really go into flower yet. This big, beautiful Sulco should be a star in my spring flower review.
Since Escobaria hasn't been represented in any of my collections over the years, it was nice to accept an offer for one of the minimas coming out of a friend's collection as he hosted the Long Beach Cactus Club's September meeting. My first Escobaria seems to be getting a good start on this year's growing season:
I'll end this part of my presentation with 3 cacti that were among my latest arrivals in December. Epithelantha bokei -- a tiny gem coming from Mesa Garden. Not plumping much yet, but it does look like it's doing something:
Mammillaria perezdelarosae from Miles' to Go. This very pretty cactus got a taste of rainwater from my portable GH, but not enough to show any plumping that I could detect. The perezdelarosae was on schedule for a real drench on 3/15, and that did the trick 3 days later:
See those buds on the right? The species supposedly does its flowering in winter, but here we are in spring and the plant wants to flower more anyway. I'll certainly take 'em!
Last, but not least here's the Stenocactus lloydii I received, also from M2G:
One good drench won't be enough to wake up some of my cacti yet. If the likelihood of rain in my forecast tomorrow night through Wednesday comes to pass, I'll say "bring it on"! I really hope this happens, because it'll be the first time when I have the opportunity to witness the results of how the cacti on my plant bench respond after spring rainfall. At least to me, those results should be unusually interesting.
Stay tuned as I check in with Part 2 of this winter shriveling/spring plumping presentation.
Cheers, everyone!
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. I'll just have to keep searching.