The beige areas around the base indicate premature corking, typical for mixes containing too much soil and organic material. Lean out the mix by adding mineral gravel -- pumice (the best if you can find it), granite gravel, or calcined clay granules. My default recommendation is a 50% soil/50% miner...

I'm pretty confident our tap water has a high-ish pH (7.5-8), but I should probably test it personally to get a good sense. I wish there was a clear report breakdown of all the minerals in Arizona tap water, but I can't seem to find that info anywhere. Don't know if this is helpful, but I just want...

Thanks for some guidance on what to look out for! My pleasure! Btw - what role does urea nitrogen play and is ammoniacal superior because it removes one more step of conversion through hydrolysis? That knowledge is, unfortunately, beyond my pay grade. :lol: (One of my regrets is the fact that I cou...

Mike - do you exclusively use Osmocote's cacti fertilizer with a few other top dressings to supplement Ca/Mg? Do you know of any all-in-one water soluble solutions available in the US that are decent alternatives? Mike, I hope you won't mind if I answer question #2 for you... Generally speaking, gr...

Are you sure nitrate should be 2:1? I don't think that's accurate. I've seen a ton of cacti growers recommend Masterblend and it contains mostly Nitrate Nitrogen (no more than 15% ammonium). GeeBee even recommends a 80/20 ratio. A good description pulled from Reddit: From here : "Ammonium, the...

Gotcha! These plants are outside, do you think I should just leave them to the predatory insects and birds? See this: https://www.cactiguide.com/cactipests/#aphids Imidacloprid soil soaks are a highly effective long-term solution to problems with mealies and armored scale. Since aphids are sucking ...

I wouldn't have put my plants outdoors. I would have kept them indoors under gro-lights. Bringing them outdoors exposed them to rust fungus which has killed about half my collection. That was about 18years ago. The remaining half remain infected after all these years. Well, it depends on where you ...

What do you think about Megacrop ? NPK of their current batch is 10-7-18 which is 10-3-15 after elemental conversions. Comes out to 1-0.3-1.5 which is right in line with the acceptable ranges you noted. The hard water in AZ should make for close to 3 or 4:1 Ca to Mg as well as 1:1 N:Ca. Packed with...

I agree with what Mike just said, although I'd like to add a few things here... First - sorry to be "Mr. Picky-Fussy", but the patches are beige, not yellow. Beige is the color of corking, and you have corking all over the place. There's a reason for that which I'll discuss in a moment. Se...

Happy Spring Steve! Happy Spring to you too! Conditions were finally right to give my collection its first deep watering of the year last weekend. I usually water at night, but when overnight lows are still in the low 50s (in my case it was 52 with overnight fog), I'll water in the morning as I did...

CoolestGravy wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 10:22 pm Right on, thanks again!

I hope life has been treating you well

You're welcome! I just gave my collection its first deep watering of the year last weekend, so it's nice to see the cacti finally waking up from their winter dormancy. Yeah, life here is pretty sweet.

For mixes which include soil, repot with fresh mix every 2-3 years. The iron in the TPS CalMag I recommended should be sufficient -- you'll see it listed on the product's label.

Hey Steve I wanted to thank you especially & I need to ask you another question, I have a few cactuses flowering right now and I was wondering should I still use the same fertilizer mix you taught me during flower? Using that mix u showed me has greened up my cactus plants quite a bit compared ...

Sorry for an confusion, but these photos are a continuation of my earlier post here. These offshoots were planted about 4 or 5 weeks ago. Looking good, Joe. To be technically correct, they're offsets (also known as pups), not offshoots. Now would be a good time to review something I said in your fi...

Imagine that you wake up one morning and discover that your collection was stolen overnight… or that an aggressive nematode killed all your cacti or that a small meteor hit your greenhouse 😊. Imagine you are forced to move to a different country and cant take your cacti with you… These all sound li...