A small collection: 2015 and beyond

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Steve Johnson
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A small collection: 2015 and beyond

Post by Steve Johnson »

Well, here we are on New Year's Day, and I'm eager to hit the ground running for my 2015 Member Topics thread. I have a few things for you as we get the party started, and I hope you'll enjoy following what this small collection will be up to over the course of the year...

Since the rainy season in SoCal runs November through April, some sort of portable greenhouse has been an important feature in my winter routine. The plastic sheeting I used to get from Home Depot wasn't durable enough for constant outdoor exposure during wintertime, so I'm putting UV-resistant polycarbonate film to the test with the hope that my new rig (AKA portable GH 3.0) will last a good long time before it needs replacement. (If you'd like some details on 3.0, check out Turb jauernigii & friends.) With a chilly week between Christmas and New Year's Day going on, I've been keeping the front up as the new design does its job -- protection from the rain that came through on the 30th, and trapping a really nice amount of heat when the sun is out. From today, let's have a look "under the hood":

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And the low and high temps reported by the outdoor thermometer on my plant bench:

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Yep, that was an overnight low of 30. Very unusual to see it now, although L.A. could be in for an unusually cold winter -- something I'll have to keep my eye on in January and February. Luckily, most of the cacti are fine being outside as long as they stay dry (thank you, portable GH!). However, there are a handful I've been keeping inside since Christmas began a string of cold nights which could spell trouble. The temporarily housebound plants are:

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Discocactus buenekeri and Melocactus matanzanus are fine down to 38, but not a good time for being outdoors at the moment. I don't think the Uebelmannia pectinifera would be happy about it either, so it came in too. My 2 Eriosyce senilises are the only cacti that could use monthly soaks in winter -- normally not a problem, although after I gave them a deep drench on December 20, the unpleasant possibility of a 32-degree overnight on the 27th was something I certainly didn't expect. Seems that I dodged a bullet there, and because I could see the prospect of a freeze coming on the heels of our recent storm, I tossed them into "cactus jail" Monday night. If the National Weather Service 7-day forecast covering my area holds up, the indoor cacti can go back outside on Sunday. The daytimes should also be warm enough to warrant taking off the front of GH 3.0. How I approach further winter watering care will depend on the forecasts I monitor on a daily basis. I've gotten pretty good at comparing them with the temps observed by the outdoor thermometer, and the only concern I'll have is to make sure I time the sips and soaks right.

While we're at it, I'll show you a couple of cacti developing buds. I detected these on my Mammillaria perezdelarosae as I got ready to skip town the day after Christmas:

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Probably difficult to see in the above photo -- here's a close-up, and you should be able to notice tiny cream-colored buds hiding in among the tubercles:

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My guess is that I'll have flowers for you in about 2 weeks.

One of my talents is playing "spot the bud" -- for example, Turbinicarpus valdezianus with a teeny tiny bud way back on November 22:

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Now it's New Year's Day, and you won't need a close-up to spot this bud:

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There's another bud (possibly 2?) you won't be able to see on camera yet. The species is slow to go from buds to flowers, but I'll continue putting another talent of mine to work with side-by-side "before and after" pics as we see the buds develop, then go into flower. Figure on sometime next month, and the valdezianus won't be the only winter-blooming cactus that'll put on a display in February!

While the front end of January is definitely a slow time for my cactus-related activities, I'll have more interesting stuff for you coming up soon -- stay tuned, my friends! :)
Last edited by Steve Johnson on Sun Jan 10, 2016 4:29 am, edited 18 times in total.
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Onzuka
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by Onzuka »

That's a really beautiful Mam Perez you have there, Steve, it almost makes me want to start growing them again.

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cactushobbyman
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by cactushobbyman »

In the valley north of you we are enjoying the lows in the mid to high 20's. :lol: Ferocactus latispinus and Mammillaria hahniana are in bloom outside and in the greenhouse all kinds of mammillaria are in bloom. Ah, the joys of winter. I'm seeing others budding up like my thelocactus. I guess spring is around the corner. 8)
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Steve Johnson
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First weekend of the new year...

Post by Steve Johnson »

...And I thought that it would be rather uneventful. Well, maybe not. I had a small repotting chore to take care of on Sunday, so let's start there.

Breaking up the polaskii family

In case you haven't heard (or don't remember) the whole story, I got my current collection started with a trip to the California Cactus Center in June 2011. Among the plants I found was a lovely Turbinicarpus polaskii that originally came from Woody Minnich's Cactus Data Plants collection in the Antelope Valley region of SoCal. When I brought it home, I was pleased to see 3 seedling volunteers in the pot. And sadly, the polaskii was my first casualty as it fell to rot that October. At least I was able to save the seedlings, although they were too small for individual pots. The smallest pot I had was a 3-incher, so in they went. Still too big perhaps? Being more than a little concerned about their prospects for survival in an over-potted state, the solution I saw was to get another polaskii that would keep the volunteers company. Darryl at CoronaCactus answered the call in April 2012 -- that's how I ended up with the Turb polaskii family you may have seen on the forum from time to time over the last 3 years. Here's a photo from the beginning of October, with the oldest volunteer and the CCN "mama" on the right flowering at once:

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As Ian will attest, putting 2 or more cacti in the same pot doesn't work out over the long term, because competition for water and nutrients will cause something to suffer. Close observation over the summer told me that all 4 polaskiis were struggling, so it was time to break up the family. Since I have enough experience with repotting cacti pretty much whenever I want, why not now? I'm going for it! Such being the case, this gives us a couple of nice opportunities. First, while I unpot the plants, we can have a good look at the roots. Second, I'll give you a sneak preview of a big repotting project I'll be undertaking over the next 2 months or so when I move a bunch of cacti from terracotta to glazed ceramic. Now here we are in one swell foop -- the oldest volunteer...

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...followed by the CCN polaskii:

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On the plant bench with my Turb jauernigii in front:

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We still have 2 polaskiis left to view, and here they are:

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Although I can't say for absolutely sure, I believe the taproots of these volunteers fused together toward the bottom. Might be a good thing, however I'm not thrilled with their underdeveloped root system(s) -- it's pretty apparent that they got the worst of the bargain. I'll clue you in on what I'll be doing with them at the end of this post. But in the meantime...

Not 1, but 2 Mammillarias with winter buds

I showed you the north-facing side of my Mamm perezdelarosae on New Year's Day. Here's the south-facing side 3 days later:

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And another Mamm has come from out of nowhere to join the festivies:

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Ah, the "red-headed Irishman" -- a staple of my collections ever since I was a kid, but never before has one grown so well for me! And that includes flowering, since the first time I saw flowers on a spinossissima was last February. They're a month ahead of schedule, so the Irishman may beat the perezdelarosae for producing the first blooms of 2015 on my bench.

Another Mamm heard from, hernandezii -- growing?

Yuppers! Daytime highs have been in the 60s, but I can thank the heat-trapping properties of my new portable GH for this:

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While I wouldn't make a habit of keeping the front up just for the extra heat, the polyfilm itself is keeping things comfy enough to encourage touches of winter growth among any plants that are so inclined. With that said, I don't want to force the situation either, so occasional sips are par for the course until the cacti are well and truly ready to put their spring growing hats on.

Saying goodbye to a few

9 square feet of growing space is all I have to work with, so I need to decide on whether I'll keep duplicate species or give them away to make room for something else. But what to do with the dupes? Sunset Succulent Society to the rescue! Why I didn't know about this club until recently is beyond me. Anyway, the meetings are close to my area, so I'll introduce myself to the group tonight -- and the perfect chance for bringing along a handful of plants that'll go to a good home. Holding onto the oldest polaskii seedling volunteer was an obvious choice. Because the CCN polaskii is different enough to my eye, that's a keeper too (until further notice -- I may give it away at some point). Okay, so the dupes on the "chopping block" tonight are: Astrophytum 'capristigma' hybrid, 1 of 2 Copiapoa hypogaea pups that survived after a lovely one I got in 2011 rotted on me back in the summer of 2013, and -- the littlest polaskii volunteers (joined at the hip?). This may be just the beginning of the gifts I'll have to offer for the Sunset club. There's more than one way to end up with dupes -- that's right, offsets! Since I have some offsetting cacti that are bound to outgrow my pot size limits, surplus pups will go to the club, and I won't have to give away the entire plant simply because it's too big for me. A nice problem to have, plus I really like the idea that I can send out little cactus presents to local growers. Having been away from the club scene for so many years, it should be fun to get back in again! :)
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Steve Johnson
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Dupes out, new arrival in!

Post by Steve Johnson »

I had a wonderful time at my first meeting of the Sunset Succulent Society Tuesday night. Nice bunch, and I think I'll be attending on a somewhat regular basis. There was no problem finding takers for my duplicate cacti, although I came away with a little something myself -- new members receive a cactus or succulent of their choice. The donation table offered a rather generous selection, so here's what I chose:

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Since I'm going with glazed ceramic these days, I was pleased to find the perfect pot for my new arrival. As soon as the growing season begins, it'll be time to repot this lovely!

I don't anticipate much for the rest of this month, so my next photo presentation will be sometime in February when I have some winter flowers to show you. C ya then!
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KittieKAT
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by KittieKAT »

Aww really no takers ? I would kill to have a Turb. Polaskii i been searching for eeeevvvveeeerrrr, i finally convinced my friend to give me one of his baby Turb, jauernigii a little while ago butstill haven't been able to find a turb. Polaskii ....i wish we had a good cacti/succulent meetingplace around where i live but theirs no much going on even in the ones that are around, the program i run is mostly for the children and youth in the poverty areas around my town, but they absolutely love IT!
If u can't find a home for your little turbs i could trade u seeds ... but im usually on the weird side of the trading route for many people, but let me kno i couldn't leave u with ALL these great little duplicates lol :)
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Steve Johnson
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by Steve Johnson »

KittieKAT wrote:Aww really no takers ?
There were takers for all 3 of the dupes -- Astrophytum 'capristigma', Copiapoa hypogaea, and the polaskii seedlings. In fact my new friends at the Sunset club were thrilled to have them. Sorry if the way I worded the previous post was confusing. #-o
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KittieKAT
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by KittieKAT »

Lol i just re-read it, i think i was just wishing u said "their were NO takers" hahaha
Darn.... another one slips thru my fingers -i really gatta become more assertive instead of lurking and hoping i get picked haha doubt it thoe i always feel strange for asking for stuff cause i feel like i should be able to get it myself cause there people in the world who can't get anything like some of the kids in the program i teach so they make me over think EVERYTHING lol! Let's hear it for a guilty conscience!!
Heehe! Well i can only project that someone wouldn't WANT a bunch of awesome Turbs. Oooh well, maybe next time u get a pup I'll beg and beg and beg u until u just HAVE to give it to me to keep yr sanity, lol
Let us kno what's going on with the group and the plant's !
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Steve Johnson
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by Steve Johnson »

KittieKAT wrote:Lol i just re-read it, i think i was just wishing u said "their were NO takers" hahaha
Darn.... another one slips thru my fingers -i really gatta become more assertive instead of lurking and hoping i get picked haha doubt it thoe i always feel strange for asking for stuff cause i feel like i should be able to get it myself cause there people in the world who can't get anything like some of the kids in the program i teach so they make me over think EVERYTHING lol! Let's hear it for a guilty conscience!!
Heehe! Well i can only project that someone wouldn't WANT a bunch of awesome Turbs. Oooh well, maybe next time u get a pup I'll beg and beg and beg u until u just HAVE to give it to me to keep yr sanity, lol
Totally understandable, and I wish I could help given the crappy situation you've had to put up with. Unfortunately there are only a few seed-bearing cacti in my collection, but at least I can help by sending you seeds. Whenever I have them available I'll PM you, then let me know if they're species you'd like to grow. By the way -- the 2 Turb polaskiis I kept have flowered and set seed before. While I can't make any promises, we may get lucky and find polaskii seeds later this year.
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keith
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by keith »

Hi Steve your set-up looks allot like mine. Plastic on plastic off depending on rain. very cool
KittieKAT
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by KittieKAT »

I'll cross my fingers for the seeds, I've honestly looked everywhere and they either don't ship to the US, or out of stock, or really expensive for small portions of seeds, and the plant's forget about it! Its like impossible
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Re: A small collection 2015

Post by BarryRice »

Turbinicactus polaskii--$4 each from Mesa Garden.
I'll grow it as long as it doesn't have glochids. Gaudy flowers a plus.
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Steve Johnson
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January report with flowers, etc.

Post by Steve Johnson »

Steve Johnson wrote:I don't anticipate much for the rest of this month...
Well, that's what I thought, but even here in mid-January I underestimated the amount of activity rating a new post. First, a brief weather report.

Following on the heels of our rain last weekend, L.A. is enjoying a stretch of springlike conditions. The 7-day forecast is showing sunny days and mostly clear nights with some low clouds and fog here and there. Daytime highs under the portable GH should be in the 80s (that's without the front on!), overnight lows in the 40s -- perfect timing for the cacti on my list to get monthly sips this weekend. February is the rainiest month in SoCal. It also tends to be the coldest, so if that's what shakes out, next month I may not water anything beyond the handful of plants which really need it.

And now without further ado, I give you my first cactus flower of the year -- Mammillaria spinossissima.

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With flower #1 spent, here's #2 on top and a 3rd that just opened yesterday:

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Still buds aplenty as you can see, and while they seem to prefer opening in dribs and drabs, let's find out if I can show you more than just a couple of flowers at once. Maybe the Irishman will oblige!

Mamm perezdelarosae displaying a wreath of pretty little buds:

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Mamm huitzilopochtli is a fascinating little guy that joined my collection in the Summer of 2013. The species is a winter bloomer, and since I hadn't tried growing one before, it'll be a treat to watch its flowering behavior. Wool sprouting between the tubercles is characteristic of many Mamms, so no surprise there. What I did find surprising was to see the wool get bushier in certain places after the growing season was done. Here's what I'm talking about -- this before-and-after is from mid November followed by the view 2 months later:

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No actual buds yet, although my curiosity leads me to keep a close eye on what the huitzilopochtli does with its wooly crown. On the flip side, Turbinicarpus valdezianus doesn't leave much to the imagination once its scaly buds emerge from the apex:

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The winter of 2013/14 went on record as the warmest and driest in California's history. That's why we saw my Strombocactus disciformis do most of its flowering last February and March. (Ian and I were both surprised as heck to see buds forming at the end of December 2013.) Thankfully our winter is back to a semblance of normalcy, so no buds for the disciformis until late spring/early summer. However, I think the heat under my portable GH probably has a hand in the touches of growth I see on the plant now. Yep, these are brand-new spines:

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Oops -- on closer inspection, there is a new bud just starting!

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Not exactly a rain barrel, but I've been storing rainwater in a half-gallon jug for whatever winter watering I'll do. (Yeah, I know it's not much, although enough to get my small collection through before spring arrives.) The disciformis was on the sip list last night, and with rainwater instead of the distilled water I've used in previous winters. Did that wake the plant up a tad, or merely coincidence? I'm not sure if anyone could say yes or no, and I'll leave this as a tantalizing little mystery.

Since I repotted my Turb polaskiis 2 weeks ago, why not repot a couple more Turbs? We just mentioned the valdezianus, so this begins my first "official" installment of...

Terracotta out, glazed ceramic in (Part 1)

By the way, I figured the plant would need a somewhat taller pot -- howzabout this?

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Since I've been doing pretty well with my Turb jauernigii, it might be fun to do a bare-root comparison of the plant when I got it in July 2013 and what it looked like when I unpotted it this afternoon:

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The jauernigii needs a bigger pot too, so here's a look at the other side of the roots, with its new home on the right:

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Whenever I see anything unusual, I reach for a 10X magnifier to investigate. Glad I did, because I noticed something that really interested me. Roots should look like they're dead when cacti are dormant -- and yet the roots of the valdezianus are very much alive. Check this out:

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No doubt about it, there are root hairs all over the place! Ditto on the jauernigii:

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There's no way I would've known about it before, but this moment in time gave me a unique opportunity to see that cactus roots in our SoCal winters may not be quite as dormant as one may think. Furthermore, it challenged my long-standing assumption about the need to keep the Turbs dry during winter. I haven't found glazed ceramic pots for my klinkerianus and pseudomacrochele yet, and the pseudopectinatus went straight into glazed ceramic when I got it a year ago -- so they'll get rainwater sips tonight. My gut feeling about the Turbs I just repotted is that I should leave them alone until they're ready for deep watering in March (or April if a cold March delays the growing season). They'll be fine until then, and a nice winter shriveling-spring plumping presentation will include what these Turbs of mine do after they get a good drink.

I'll put this post to bed with a view of 2 plump, happy Erisoyce senilises 4 days after they got their latest monthly winter soaks on Wednesday night (and you got it, rainwater!):

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Given the flowering history I have with senilis Sr., new buds should start apearing within a few weeks.

More good stuff to follow, my friends! :)
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Robb
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Re: A small collection 2015 -- updated 1/18

Post by Robb »

I love the comparison of your Turb jauernigii, Steve. It wonderfully illustrates how much root growth can happen with a good watering schedule and compost!
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Steve Johnson
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Re: A small collection 2015 -- updated 1/18

Post by Steve Johnson »

Robb wrote:I love the comparison of your Turb jauernigii, Steve. It wonderfully illustrates how much root growth can happen with a good watering schedule and compost!
I was gonna wait for a later post to bring this up, but your comment gave me a good entre to review what I'm doing with mixes -- no time like the present, I suppose!

Going back to my early years as a cactus collector, I definitely came from the "old school" of soil-based mixes when I started my current collection in 2011. I don't want to bog everyone down with the details on what got me from there to here, so I'll just say that "here" means the mix of pumice and decomposed granite I've been using with great success since 2012. The only drawback to the DG I've been getting is the fact that about 60% of it is "play sand". But when I sift it out and throw away the handful of big chunks I find, this yields a suitable amount to mix with the pumice. My ratio of pumice to DG is 60/40, although we don't have to be all that precise about it. What I get is a fairly coarse aggregate of grain sizes ranging from 1/32" to about 3/16". Even with all the sifting, I was surprised at how much fines residue (including pumice dust, by the way) was sticking in the mix. However, I'm doing something a bit different now, as I finally decided to take James up on his recommendation to wash the mix in running water first. Here's a sample, and we can actually see what the pumice and DG look like as distinct components:

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The different earth-tone colors are kinda pretty, aren't they? Anyway, I can see 2 advantages to washing the mix. First, you don't have to worry about DG and pumice dust floating up and depositing it along the base of your cacti. (Not life-threatening, just unsightly -- this has been a pain with some of mine.) And second, when you unpot plants, the mix falls apart easily and there will be little or no root tear-off in the process. While the residual fines in the mix haven't led to growing problems, unpotting my cacti tends to be more akin to an archeological dig. The issue may not be important for people using plastic pots, but I'll appreciate the ease of unpotting plants when they come out of the washed mix. By the way -- my only reason for the DG is to make the pots heavier so they don't tip over in the wind. Many growers do perfectly well with straight pumice.

I put soil in the mix for some of my cacti. With Melocactus matanzanus and Discocactus buenekeri it's a mineral-to-soil ratio of 80/20. (And that's what I'll be using when I repot the Disco crystallophilus I recently got.) The fine root systems of Tephros can't be supported for good growth in a coarse aggregate, so more soil turned out to be necessary -- a 50/50 ratio has worked out really well. I've been using the 50/50 mix for Eriosyce senilis Sr. too. Jr. has been doing great with just the pumice/DG mix, and while I could make that change with Sr., I'm reluctant to go against the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule.
If you just want photos without all the blather, please visit my Flickr gallery.
My location: Los Angeles, CA (Zone 10b)
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