Hi from South Africa

[Wise guy]

Hi all, thank you for permitting me to join this group.
As above, I'm from Gauteng in South Africa, and am employed in the nursery business. I'm a production manager of a wholesale bedding plant nursery, but grow cacti as a hobby. Some of my oldest must be about 40 years old, and they're all grown outside in the garden. We have a temperate climate, summer rainfall and mild temperatures with little frost in winter.
Ironically, I have only now started to experiment with growing cacti from seed, using a cactus mixed assortment from one of our seed suppliers, so it will be interesting to see what those little green and bronze blobs turn into.
Thank you for all the information shared on this forum, I look forward to learning a lot.

All the best, Mike

[gemhunter178]

Welcome!

[Wise guy]

Thank you Gemhunter, I'm finding the forum very interesting.

[mmcavall]

Hi Mike,
welcome to the forum! I'm from Brazil and I dont have too many people from southern hemisphere to discuss...our climate conditions are quite different from. Hope we can exchange some experience.

[Wise guy]

Hi Mmcavall, thank you. You're right, the southern hemisphere is somewhat different, especially when working on dates of seasons in N hemisphere literature. We will naturally have some similarities, but also quite a few differences. Firstly, my altitude near Johannesburg is at about 1753m above sea level, which is somewhat higher than most of Brazil if I'm correct. Secondly, I would imagine your humidity could be a lot higher than ours, and rainfall according to the internet is a lot higher than our average over the past 11 years of 804mm per annum. So, similar but different. I would guess your soil mixes would need to be better drained than mine, especially for outdoor cultivation.
All the best, Mike.

[hegar]

Hello Mike,
I too want to welcome you to this forum. I live at the westernmost tip of Texas, U.S.A. and at an altitude of about 4,000 feet or 1,212 meters. Our climate here is also mild, but because of the altitude we do experience temperatures that will at times even kill some native cacti. I too grow all my plants in the ground. Because of our average rain fall of 8 inches per year (200 mm) I need to irrigate my plants every once in a while.

Harald

[Wise guy]

20161009_133636 resized.jpg (293.19 KiB) Viewed 1499 times

Hello Harald, thank you for the welcome, sorry I've only noticed it now! This is an interesting hobby, if somewhat challenging at times, guess that's what keeps it fun. Just a correction to my initial post, while my plants are out in the garden, most are planted in pots, so they can be moved around a bit if necessary. I'll illustrate with one of my recent bloomers, a Lobivia sylvestrii, at least that's one of the old names.


All the best,
Mike