What the...?

[Steve Johnson]

When I put my cactus collection together in June of last year, it included a Sulcorebutia rauschii. The plant kept its lovely apple green skin through the end of summer:

Sulcorebutia_rauschii09272011_small.jpg (78.08 KiB) Viewed 1860 times

The rauschii was in my local c&s nursery's mix at the time, but between that and watering in hard water over last summer, the poor plant had taken its toll on a long, dry winter. I moved the rauschii to a pumice/DG mix at the end of March, and it's been getting a regular acidified watering/fert regimen ever since. The recovery has been very slow. At the end of May I saw the beginning of 4 flower buds. Since the rauschii didn't flower at all last year, I thought "well, there's a little progress anyway". Then the buds proceeded to go nowhere. Here's what the rauschii looks like as of July 1:

Sulcorebutia_rauschii07012012.JPG (219.54 KiB) Viewed 1860 times

I was prepared to see 4 aborted buds -- to be expected as Sulcos flower in the spring. But what's this?

Sulcorebutia_rauschii007192012_01.JPG (213.91 KiB) Viewed 1860 times

If that bud makes it to full flower, I'll be amazed! But that's not all -- I was curious to see what a new rauschii pup would look like, and now I have my answer. Here's a closer look at the pup:

Sulcorebutia_rauschii007192012_02.JPG (75.31 KiB) Viewed 1860 times

After all this plant has been through, it's nice to see a few signs of life there. Hope to see more by the end of summer, and in the meantime maybe I'll have a nice flower pic for you! By the way, rauschii has a nice, fat taproot on it. Are they prone to splitting if they get too much water in the summertime?

While I'm here, I have a photo of my Turbinicarpus schmiedickeanus ssp. schmiedickeanus for you. It also came into my collection last year, and likewise didn't flower at all then. As I examined it Sunday night, lo and behold a bud started barely showing through the Turb's wooly little top. And now the bud as it looks 3 days later:

Turbinicarpus_schmiedickeanus_ssp_schmiedickeanus07182012.JPG (198.92 KiB) Viewed 1860 times

I'll have to keep my eye on this one -- a new flower photo for my archive!

[Saxicola]

I don't like that it is so yellow and has flattened some, but the new growth and flower buds are good signs and probably mean the plant it happy. Don't worry about the flower being at a weird time, plants just do that sometimes. I don't think it is a desperation flower like some trees will make when they are dying.

[Steve Johnson]

I don't like that it is so yellow and has flattened some, but the new growth and flower buds are good signs and probably mean the plant it happy. Don't worry about the flower being at a weird time, plants just do that sometimes. I don't think it is a desperation flower like some trees will make when they are dying.

I don't like what happened to the rauschii either. Since you know the nursery we've been talking about, I'd like to come back here with a few thoughts about how their cactus mix was behaving. I'll try and post a couple of photos to show you what happens when the mix is watered, and this may be a good clue as to why none of my cacti were doing as well as they should've been.

[Saxicola]

Since I didn't buy anything from them I didn't pay special attention to the mix they use, but it is quite possible that a big consideration in what mix they use is cost. Nurseries generally aren't high profit operations and if you can save a few cents per pot by using a cheaper mix it really adds up over the course of thousands of pots. I don't blame them. There is a big C&S nursery in our area that has a very high peat ratio (upwards of 70%) at least on the small pots which make up the bulk of their business. It works for them but is bad news for us in the long term. The high quality mail-order nurseries, and the backyard nurseries that you see at C&S shows tend to use a good mix despite the additional cost probably because they have a higher profit margin on the more specialist plants they sell, plus they likely have less overhead than a retail nursery renting land in a busy commercial area.

I forget if I mentioned it before but I've been going through a phase of figuring out the right mix for me much in the way you are doing yourself. I've settled on giving pure pumice a try. An expert grower in my area that sells at all the shows uses that for everything he grows in pots (well, he'll do an 80% pumice/ 20% perlite mix for certain seedlings and small plants that need more water retention). The only major drawback is you need to keep up on fertilization, but on the other hand it is probably one of the least rot prone mixes. I think it may make the difference particularly in the winter when it is cool and wet. If we had loam like Ian can get I'd probably do a mix with that, but we don't. I think the drawbacks of organic mixes are worse than the drawback of a pure mineral media. We'll see what happens over the next year or two, then I'll decide if this is what I'll stick with for the long term.

[Tony]

To my knowledge, a large pecentage if not most of the "nurserys" in Ca that concentrate on C&S get their plants from C&J and do not change the mix after they buy it, they sell it as is in whatever mix it was in at the time of purchase.

[iann]

The lower part of the plant is scarred, and also a little towards the apex. I would suspect mites if this was my plant. They love this whole group of plants, presumably they don't need a defence against mites on top of a Bolivian mountain.

[Saxicola]

To my knowledge, a large pecentage if not most of the "nurserys" in Ca that concentrate on C&S get their plants from C&J and do not change the mix after they buy it, they sell it as is in whatever mix it was in at the time of purchase.

That would explain a lot. I didn't realize one nursery had such a big influence on the industry in this region. I wonder if that wholesale C&S nursery in the San Fernando Valley buys from them. It would explain why they have no obvious propagation area on site, but wouldn't explain how they'd make money buying wholesale and selling wholesale as well.

Thankfully there are still plenty of small specialty nurseries that are growing the really interesting stuff a huge wholesaler wouldn't bother with.

[Steve Johnson]

The lower part of the plant is scarred, and also a little towards the apex. I would suspect mites if this was my plant. They love this whole group of plants, presumably they don't need a defence against mites on top of a Bolivian mountain.

I knew some bad things were happening to the rauschii over winter, but I didn't know why. The condition of the apex concerned me, although mites weren't even on my radar screen until after I started frequenting the forum in November. If those nasties were there, they came and went before I would even notice.

Since I didn't buy anything from them I didn't pay special attention to the mix they use, but it is quite possible that a big consideration in what mix they use is cost.

To my knowledge, a large pecentage if not most of the "nurserys" in Ca that concentrate on C&S get their plants from C&J and do not change the mix after they buy it, they sell it as is in whatever mix it was in at the time of purchase.

I can skip photos of how the c&s nursery's mix was acting in water, so a description will suffice. First, here's a sample of the mix I got from there last year:

CCC_soil_sample.JPG (118.04 KiB) Viewed 1779 times

When I first posted this photo on the forum, I was asking if anyone knew what's in the mix. Darryl said that it looked to him like SuperSoil. There was so much I wasn't even thinking about at the time, but when I started investigating different mixes on the forum, I decided to finally see what was happening when I looked at how the nursery's mix would behave in the application of watering. So I put the dry mix into a pot and poured water on it. Seemed like forever to soak in the first time, although the water finally drained out through the bottom of the pot. The top of the soil (I'd say down to about 1/4") was wet. Below that the soil was wet in spots, but dry in others. When I was watering my cacti last year, I just assumed that the mix would evenly saturate the soil. In fact, first watering did take a long time. Now I know better, and kind of a shock to see what happened when I gave the mix a proper watering test.

I watered my cacti once a week throughout last summer. As I say, first watering took a long time to get into the mix. Subsequent waterings seemed to get moisture in more quickly, but even then it took well over a minute for the water to drain through. Now let's look at what happened when I unpotted the cacti for repotting into my pumice/DG mix. I dug around the edge of each pot to extract the contents without damaging the roots any more than I absolutely had to. The soil should loosen without much effort. But that wasn't the case -- the old soil acted more like hardpan, and it quickly became obvious that the roots were trapped in a mix that didn't allow them to grow the way they should. For all that watering (and the controlled-release fert I purchased from the nursery), my cacti simply weren't getting the moisture and nutrients they needed over the summer. Every cactus in my collection suffered to one extent or another, but 3 were the worst: A Melocactus matanzus that barely got through some light winter watering (significant shrinkage and nutrient deficiency -- the plant is still alive, but it's nowhere close to its original plump self), an Echinocereus rigidissimus var. rubispinus (lost its roots and never recovered), and the Sulco rauschii which is the original subject of this post. Here's what it looked like at the end of winter:

Sulcorebutia_rauschii03102012_small.jpg (46.59 KiB) Viewed 1779 times

Now here's a post that came in from the Sick Cacti forum today:

on that note the soil may be the problem, commercial cactus mix will clump when it dries making it hard for water to reach the roots

StrUktO hit the nail right on the head, and I'll consider my rauschii to be a "poster child" for the root (pun intended) problem of what I'm describing here.

Now here's what a potting medium should look like when you unpot your c&s:

So today I was checking some of my plants, when I had this strange urge of checking out my adromichus...I took it out to see how he was doing...I wasn't expecting this...

(Sorry for the bad pictures)



Just look at the size of those roots....holy cow!!! When I took it out, all came out in one piece, no soil was spilled, the roots had everything in place...I am just amazed, i never expected that...

I never thought that he could develop so many roots in the amount of time that I have it (less than a year)...and the sheer size got me completely by surprise!!

I'm seriously leaning toward adding some soil to my pumice/DG, but that'll have to wait for next year. If (or more like when) I do, I'll get a good look at what comes out of my current pumice/DG mix. I'm willing to bet those roots are looking a lot healthier than they did coming out of that nursery's old mix.

As to the rauschii, I'm not in the habit of throwing away plants just because they got ugly due to bad cultivation. With that said, I'm prepared for the fact that it probably won't look any better than it looks now. I'll do as well as I can under the circumstances, and I think the best thing I can hope for is a bunch of new pups to appear and grow healthy if better cultivation practices do well for me over the years.

By the way, Saxicola, here's the punch line -- the place you and I are talking about is a specialty nursery. There for 30+ years, and that's supposed to be a "specialty" mix? If so, they disappoint me, and only one of the reasons why I have second thoughts about going there again.

[amanzed]

I think CCC's mix can do fine if it's mixed with mostly pumice or perlite/pumice mix. But yeah I wouldn't use it unmixed.

I'm using "dirty pumice" lately. I dempen some pumice and mix in some DG until it looks dirty, but it's still 90% pumice by volume…sometimes adding a little Bio-Tone or tiny bit of silt or compost, but not so much as to fill the spaces between the pumice…just enough to increase the ion exchange capacity of the pumice without impairing it's drainage & air-holding capacity. "Friable" is the word lots of experienced growers use to describe any number of adequate mixes you can create.

[Steve Johnson]

I think CCC's mix can do fine if it's mixed with mostly pumice or perlite/pumice mix. But yeah I wouldn't use it unmixed.

Well, there you go -- the people at the CCC recommended adding some pumice, but only for certain species. If I remember correctly, I believe it was about 20% for Astrophytums, 25% for Turbinicarpus, and 30% for Melocactus matanzus. Nowhere near enough pumice, and it should've been for everything. Pains me to say this because they're really nice, but if it weren't for the fact that I discovered the forum, I'd hate to think about what my cacti would look like if I was still going by their advice.

[Saxicola]

In regards to the adromischus, I think that Crassulaceae (as a general rule) may appreciate some organic matter, or at least a moister mix than a lot of succulents. I've got several Aeonium in plain Super Soil and they do fine. Next time I repot them I will make a better mix of course, but it gives you the idea. Crassulaceae also tend to be faster growers than a lot of cactus so you will see results faster. Don't get too carried away changing your mix all the time. It may take years to really evaluate how a particular mix is working for you.

CCC may have been around 30 years, and I know they are quite knowledgeable about plants, but for the most part they sell young plants. I think the rapid growth of young plants (compared to mature ones) may make them more tolerant (even appreciative?) of heavier mixes. So their perspective may be skewed towards that and the mix they sell may be reflective of this. Just a guess.

[Steve Johnson]

Major progress on my S. rauschii now -- the photo I posted on July 19 with a new pup has been joined by 5 more! They're looking so nice and healthy, and hopefully my improved cultivation practices will get the plant through the coming winter in much better shape compared to what happened last time. We still have plenty of summer left, though. I'll post a photo of the rauschii with pups at the end of September, and we'll have a look.