How many plants do you have?

[emilleejoyce]

Perhaps I just trying to convince myself that buying a couple more plants will be okay, but I am curious.

How many plants do you have (cacti/succulents or not)??
I know some of y'all on here have a huge number you care for, and I'm just wondering, how do you do it? Like, how do you keep up with who needs watering, for example? And what do you do about space?
I live in a tiny apartment so any new addition to my plant family comes with a lot of agonizing over space first. And I'm wondering how those of y'all with a huge number of plants make it work.

I have 17 plants in my apartment right now (very few of them are actually cacti or succulents) but I keep what I call a "plant catalog" to keep track of when what plants need repotting and when I got them, etc.

So....how many plants do you have and how do you manage them?

[Snowcat]

I have 34 cacti in 26 pots sitting along with a single violet on one windowsill. And... ummm ~170 seedlings in 3 containers also on that one windowsill.
Half of them get no watering now. The others get watered once in 10 days, and 3 tiny pots get watered each Wednesday AND Sunday Easy

[emilleejoyce]

Oh that's a question I forgot to ask. I've noticed a lot of people here grow things from seed and I'm just wondering what you do with all those seedlings?? I mean, is the germination rate so bad that one can afford to plant several hundred seeds or do you sell them? Give them away? What?

[iann]

Hundreds. Close to a thousand. Way more than a thousand if you count the seedlings individually. Mostly quite small though.

[Harriet]

I do not try to grow plants indoors. my house is not suited for that ... no good light! I am lucky to be in Florida, where the sun is bright and the temperatures stay fairly warm. At one time I had nearly 500 plants in my GreenHouse. But, since all of them were "trials" to see what species would survive my neglect and Florida weather, I probably have only 300 left in the GH. I have been doing this about 6 1/2 years now, so I have had enough time to decide what works for me, what doesn't, and what I like best. (I'm turning into a "Fat Plant" freak!) This winter is going to be a big test, as I have moved dozens of plants from the GH into the yard, and I am waiting to see how badly I have injured them!

As to how I manage them... I water year round, less in the winter, I have a rain barrel with a solar pump and I water everything at once. I periodically dissolve tomato fertilizer in the water so my plants are fertilized when they are watered. I'm sure there are folks out there that would be aghast at my cavalier attitude, but hey, it works for me!

[Arjen]

I don't grow indoors either, have a small greenhouse in my yard with approximately 500 plants in it, a lot of them small though
also a lot of seedlings on lower shelves, haven't counted those, but they are many
it's almost winter here so I don't water them, when it's forecasted to freeze I put the heating on
during the growing season everything gets watered at once, depending on the weather every one or two weeks
although at the start and end of the season that can be monthly

[majcka]

I don't have plants numberd, but I can tell you I have about 140 species of cacti and about 50 species of other suculents plus some Orchids (Phalaenopsis). Most of them stays in GH all year round. Most cold tender moves into house during winter time. Worked last winter, I'll se how I get this year. I manage to collect that much in 2,5 years.

I water them when I fell like they need and I water them as much as I feel they need. Sometimes work, sometimes I miss. And then I have some problems to save them. Sometimes It works, sometimes id doesn't.

[DaveW]

Same as Ian about 1000+, but all cacti as I don't grow Other Succulents, though I don't count small seedlings until a year or so old.

"I know some of y'all on here have a huge number you care for, and I'm just wondering, how do you do it?"

Studied neglect! They have two chances to fit in with my regime, which is summarised as when I get around to them, and if they don't they expire.

"how do you keep up with who needs watering, for example?"

All get watered at the same time, like it or lump it, if they die they die and make room for others!

I can only speak about cacti, but they are fairly tough for the most part unless from more tropical regions when my cold conditions do not suit them in winter so those few come into the house. However provided you can keep up the heat needed over winter I believe most of the tropical ones are not that hard to grow, but they do become "touchy" at lower temperatures.

You will always loose some plants, often over winter, but these make room for new ones. I lost quite a few in the bad winter here a couple of years ago, but the staging's are quickly filling up again even in that short time. Usually every time you re-pot they need larger pots and take up more staging space anyway. If you have 17 plants and re-pot them into one inch bigger pots they would take up 17 inches more linear space. If I do that with 1000 plants I would need 83.33 extra linear feet, therefore although it's square feet that matter in my case, staging's quickly fill up again

I mostly give away or swap seedlings, that's how the losses of other species often get replaced.

[BobbyZ]

We have a Florida home and a Ontario apartment where we spend the summer. In our Florida home we have over sixty plants in the dining, living and kitchen areas. We keep around 15 plants (aloes, kalancoes and a mixed pot of 6 cacti) out front. In our screened porch we have around 70 cacti species and around 15 Euphorbias. We have three cactus and succulent areas in our outside garden mostly Opuntias, Agaves, and aloes. In our Canadian apartment I have 40 cacti species and 20 succulents. I have also started to collect bromeliads. My wife's mantra is no more plants, but I am acactaholic. To fit them all I plant in mixed dishes of compatable species. Bobby Z

[tumamoc]

Maybe 200 cacti for me, and I don't consider seedlings in that count.

[Kamos]

That's a great question emilleejoyce! I've often wondered how someone can take care of 100s or 1000s of plants.
I'm new to the hobby...about 80 plants in almost 3 years. DaveW ,I like your practical approach....survival of the fittest!
That's basically what I've been doing

[cactushobbyman]

I have about 30 cactus in my front yard, some as high as 8 feet. In the greenhouse, at least 100 if not more. Seedlings, maybe 500 (I wasn't having luck with seeds that I bought, so I tried seeds from my E. grusonii and have 300 seedling from that experiment.) About 6 years ago I may a pet cemetery for the family pet and now my succulent count is growing. Two years ago I enclosed my patio and made a sun room. So, the house plants are increasing. I have 20 fruit trees and raised beds for the garden. I have to stay busy, I'm not the person to sit very long and watch TV, not when there are plants to take care of.

[emilleejoyce]

This is all so enlightening! I don't feel near as bad about my meager 17 plants now. Haha. Here's another question I just thought of, at what times of the year do you usually add to your collection? Is it a constant year-round, when you find something you like you buy it, kind of thing? Or is it an only buy new plants once a year kind of thing?

I've noticed I tend to add to my collection during the fall and save the spring and summer time for repotting. I only have 4 cacti/succulents right now and the rest of my plants are subtropicals. I've been collecting plants for a while but I've only recently started with cacti and succulents again!

[AKNicolle]

I've got about 40 cacti and succulents growing under lights in our basement. They're currently accompanied by my tropical bonsai trees until Spring. Unfortunately here there's only a window of a few months where the cacti can be taken outside, so I often don't bother.

I've been collecting since 2008, and at one stage probably had closer to double the collection. Over the years I've discovered which species thrive with neglect and have thrown out most of the rest. What's left are the real survivors!

Generally water once per month or thereabouts - sometimes I forget for a few more weeks! There are a couple like the rainbow cactus that I don't water at all this time of year, until spring. I find the plants that tend to do better are those with care instructions on the label I've also found out the hard way that tap water is bad news, so I stick with distilled these days.

[Tony]

If you have the time and room for a couple more plants, by all means, get a couple more plants and as far as I am concerned there is never a bad time to get a new one!

I want to thank you for lighting a fire under me this morning.
I have been wanting to at least get an approximate number of plants in my collection for awhile now. And being its a holiday and I don't have to be anywhere until later today, I took a walk around the yard early this morning and took a rough count.
The last time I did an individual plant count was around four years ago if I remember correctly, and at that time it was five to six hundred different species of cacti and succulent plants, both in pots and in the ground. It was at that point that I stopped keeping track, because I was buying trading and selling on a regular basis and had become fairly successful at raising plants from seed and the numbers just got away from me.
I can get away with growing what I do, thanks to the space that I have, my mild desert climate and the fast draining, sandy loam soil in my yard for the landscape plants that are in the ground.
I have broken down the growing areas around my small house into 14 different locations, 7 being in ground beds and 7 shade house's or shaded benches. The shade structures provide both shade in the heat of summer and frost/rain protection in the dead of winter.
There are around 1500 different, mature C&S in my collection at this point, either in pots or in ground with an additional 32 flats containing approximately 1050 individually potted plants that are between 2 and 4 years old and another two flats packed with several hundred young seedlings that will need to be potted on next summer that I don't currently have bench space for. I usually just build another bench if the need arises.

I have been doing this awhile now and I have a pretty good Idea when to water what and when and that is for the most part the key to keeping them happy and healthy for the long haul.
Learn when and when not to water by asking questions and or by trial and error, ie killing plants, and success with C&S will become fairly easy.
Fortunately for me many winter growing succulents can go right out into the yard this time of year. I don't need to worry about watering them as mother nature takes care of it for me. Cacti in general get watered during the growing season approximately every two weeks but there is no set schedule. sometimes its every week, sometimes its three. When I have time, I do it. Thankfully, many of these plants not only tolerate benign neglect, some of them thrive on it.
The soil you choose is very important and is discussed ad nauseum on the forums. I generally use the same mix for everything. This consistency makes it easier for me to know when similar sized pots should be ready to water again as they dry out at about the same time.