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daiv wrote:Looks good Andy. Have you been able to see any losses this year? I think the plants really got a break this year and there will be very little winter losses, if any.

Oh sure, I always have a loss or two. Rain is the biggest problem here and it seems I picked the wrong 'era' to start a cactus garden. Rainfall last year imby was 77.55" (1970 mm), it was a record year for many areas here. On top of that the worst rain occurred at the worst time, late summer/fall. 17" in August, 10" in September with 7" in October (including a very destructive snowstorm). This keeps the plants too plump then combined with somewhat mild weather a few plants never deflate properly leading to death even in a mild winter. I lost two reichenbachii's and an Opuntia. It is at least nice to know that 57 out of 60 plants survived a record rainfall year.

57 out of 60! Outstanding, Andy !

I guess I forget that we can have very different weather between here and there. We had a really dry fall by contrast and so I think our cactus here had one of the easiest winters ever. Because it was both dry and not that cold.

Hhmm that opuntia looks familar, what variety is(was) it?

It's OP030 at coldhardycactus.com. Don't quite know what it is except that it's not O. fragilis.

I forgot that I had propagated a pad last year so I still have it but years of slow growth out the window.

Knew it looked familar, I believe I lost mine also over the winter, just haven't yanked it yet. Couple others are really questionable at this point also.

Andy - OP030 is a fragilis x denuda cross; Zone 4; hi plateau stuff. Still its the contant moisture it's no match against

Some of you may remember my saucer sled pot posted in the custom pot thread last year. Well during our freak October snowstorm a poplar tree dropped 7-8 branches on all my pots. The saucer pot took a hit and broke. Nothing else was damaged but I think the saving grace was there was probably 10 inches of snow on everything before they started dropping. Funnily enough I congregated all my pots there for protection from just such an occurrence
So with the nice March weather I decided to fix it by putting it back on the original sled, replacing the broken pieces then adding the same hypertufa mix over the breaks. I realize now that I should have glued the pieces back first but it still seems to have worked.
Flipped in one piece
adding to the inside
finished and ready to use again. Looks a little goofy but once soil is put back I bet no one will even notice.

Nice job you did there.

Looks like the fix was pretty easy and looks good. Sounds like you were pretty lucky (as I was) in not having more damage in the cactus garden from that storm (although the rest of the yard was a wreck)

Nice pot save! If it breaks again though, you could always slide the flat side up against that rock wall... they look like they were made for each other!

I would have glued it back together...
Nice work Andy.

Tony wrote:I would have glued it back together...

Yeah, I know (hangs head down)

Harriet wrote:Nice pot save! If it breaks again though, you could always slide the flat side up against that rock wall... they look like they were made for each other!

It would be cool to make a rock wall out of the stuff!

RayC wrote:Looks like the fix was pretty easy and looks good. Sounds like you were pretty lucky (as I was) in not having more damage in the cactus garden from that storm (although the rest of the yard was a wreck)

No damage to plants other than an Opuntia broken to pieces. I'll see if I can dig up a picture of all the branches piled up by the side of the road.