Harald - great collection of Echinocereus and others - E. roetterii flowers are especially remarkable. Do you have your cactus in a dedicated bed, or are they more or less everywhere? - Jim

Harald - thanks for having a look. Excuse my delay in responding; I've been offline for a week +. The two plants you ask about: the one on the left is an Echinocereus lloydii that is now in its 4th year and still going strong. To the right (the larger one) was an Echinopsis formosa v. amaichensis th...

As mentioned in a post in member topics last month, here are a few photos of my hardy succulent bed taken over the past few years. Clearly the most successful of the bunch is O. humifusa. I first obtained a couple of loose pads of the opuntia from a natural site along a roadside in central Virginia ...

Wayne - nice healthy-looking Echinopsis hybrids. I've had some of my Echinopsis flower at that size, or slightly larger; keep in mind that I have much larger ones that have yet to flower. I suspect it depends on a variety of factors, such as hybrid type, optimal conditions for that particular hybrid...

Wayne - thank you for the warm welcome; I've been enjoying and learning from the list, although with the good weather arriving, I haven't been online much lately. Your question about plant age is a good one. I don't have a lot of personal experience with age at flowering, as I've only been raising t...

Oh the flowers! I love them! Thanks for sharing :D How long have you kept growing cacti? Pompom - I've been growing cactus since 2013, a couple of years before I retired. I was originally inspired as a teenager by a neighbor who gave me a cutting of Opuntia microdasys. I then came across a Johnson'...

Concerning terracotta pots - I understand that many prefer plastic in terms of plant health, but I'm finding that during the humid summers in North Carolina, I'm having success with terracotta pots. Plastic works pretty well, but like glazed pots, they tend to hold the moisture in longer.

I'm new to the list as of last week and this is my first 'topical' post. My interests are mainly echinopsis (including Trichocereus and Lobivia, among others), opuntias, hardy succulents, and most recently, melocactus. My collection is small for now, mainly limited by 'wintereing over' space. From m...

In the next week I'll go through my pics and post some of my collection - maybe one for my echinopsis hybrids and one for my hardy cactus bed. Stay tuned.

This week, after finding an informative (older) thread about melocactus in the forum, I've gone ahead and joined it in hopes of picking up a few more tips and insights. My interest in cactus started in the 60's with a Johnson's Cactus Gardens catalog. I retired a couple of years ago and I've rekindl...