Free the roots!

Discuss repotting, soil, lighting, fertilizing, watering, etc. in this category.
Pompom
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Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

I bought these 3 new cacti. I have my own hunch which genuses all of them are but I don't know the exact species. I will post better pics to the identification section later. I have something more urgent to think than specific IDs. I also want to encourage everyone who is new with cacti to take their time with the peat when changing the soil of new purchased cactus. You can do it! The results can be really rewarding!

It seems that I've never bought a cactus in peat before. Removing the old soil has never been as hard as it was today. I don't know where I even begin.
1) Peat is a horrible thing. What did the first person using peat with cacti was thinking? How did he got his idea through and spread worldwide? He must've been a really good salesman or something.
2) High pain tolerance is a nice perk. But it doesn't help with spines which submerged under nail. Hopefully I don't get an infection :lol:
3) Do not ever, ever assume that the cactus is fine in the pot and soil you bought it in. Always check the roots. Always check the soil. The plant can be in a right soil and the roots can be fine and that's ok, then you just put it back how it was. But if there's something wrong with the roots and/or soil, it will be a certain death penalty for the cactus if you've done nothing to it.
4) Keep tweezers with you. You'll need them. And good light so you can locate the spines on your skin quicker.
5) Don't worry, you'll brake some of the roots. Your cactus will forgive you.

Ok! Well let's start with the easiest one I had. Physically easiest. Hardest to endure mentally. I don't know what it is but let's not let it bother us. That's not important. What's important is that this cactus is in trouble. It is about 9cm in diameter and I bought it in about same sized pot: 10cm in diameter about 10cm deep. It was kinda shock to realize the pot was full of peat. As I removed the peat starting from bottom I quickly realized there is no roots around. Finally I found the pathetic root system deep in the peat. I don't know how long the plant has been without water since the roots were kinda dry and half of them broke off. But in the other hand it's a fortune it hasn't been watered cause it surely would've ended dead. As I cleaned the roots I noticed it has started to sprout new roots. It's going to survive!
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The second plant, a small assumed echinocactus grusonii in a 5cm pot. It was potted in peat but the roots looked nice. I broke the root ball and encountered a new kind of problem. I've never seen as tight tangle before! I didn't take a picture of it because I was trying to release the tangle. In the picture you can see where I ended up with it. Imagine all those roots being tangled under the cactus. With a tight ball of peat. And the cactus was continuously shedding tiny spines to my palms. From where, I don't know. While handling the other two I did't get spines stuck to my palms, just with this.
I soaked the tangled roots in water for few minutes. It did help a little since the roots were not that fragile and were more flexible. I'm happy I did release the roots from the peat because look at the length of them! I was really impressed by the roots it has.
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Most impressive roots had this assumed gymnocalycium.
I knew removing the soil is going to be hard as soon I checked the bottom of the pot. I was afraid to remove the pot because I didn't want to break the thick roots poking out of the holes. Fortunately they were just slightly tangled together so I didn't need to cut them.
After I took the pot off I knew the job is going to be even harder. Thick roots, hairy roots, everywhere. Sorry of the bad quality of the picture.
It felt like it took forever to remove the peat around the cactus. It was like a carpet. I was just wondering if I ever gonna make it, there's still more peat to remove. At first I thought the plant has only one thick taproot but soon I noticed it has several thick roots tangled together.
Finally the roots were in order and clean enough! Aren't they looking nice? I hope the pot I have for it is deep enough.
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That kind of Monday I had. The cacti are drying up overnight and tomorrow I will pot them. For potting I need little tips since this ended up little different I was thinking.
A) I have no idea what to do with the first cactus. I have no super shallow and wide pots for it. I have only normal clay pots which are not that deep but too deep for the roots this one has. I was thinking if I put a good layer of hardened clayballs on the bottom of the pot. So there will be not that much soil but not too much either. Is that good enough?
B) For the assumed echinocactus grusonii, how large pot should I give it? Is it ok for it to have the roots little cramped there? I think there surely is not a 6cm wide and 9cm deep pot :lol:
C) Is the pot I have deep enough for the assumed gymno?

Thank you in advance! :D
Last edited by Pompom on Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
keith
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by keith »

looks good. I use high pressure water spray over a 5 gallon bucket. then put Clorox bleach in the bucket in case I've freed any root mealies because don't need them roaming my yard. then dump bucket the next day. plant cactus either next day or longer.

I had a rental house in Phoenix AZ where I would just clean off the roots over gravel with a hose, most yards are gravel there, soon every weed growing in the gravel had root mealie bug. my bad. :cry:
Pompom
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

keith wrote: Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:27 pm looks good. I use high pressure water spray over a 5 gallon bucket. then put Clorox bleach in the bucket in case I've freed any root mealies because don't need them roaming my yard. then dump bucket the next day. plant cactus either next day or longer.

I had a rental house in Phoenix AZ where I would just clean off the roots over gravel with a hose, most yards are gravel there, soon every weed growing in the gravel had root mealie bug. my bad. :cry:
Oh my :lol: We can always learn something. Those tiny things are so annoying! I hope I never get them.
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ElieEstephane
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by ElieEstephane »

Good job! Those roots are squeaky clean.
it doesn't help with spines which submerged under nail
I never minded spines in my hands but spines under the nails... that is the most painful thing ever! A good trick is to wet the cactus spines and your hands. Wet spines bend rather than break.

Another tip for tangled roots...hold the cactus in your hand a submerge it in a bucket of water then wiggle it underwater. After 1 minute of wiggling, the roots will be free. Make sure the cactus is above the roots underater or they will tangle with the spines. When you remove the cactus from the water, spread the roots on your palm before because the draining water and gravity will pull the roots together again if you don't do so.

As for your questions:
A: No harm in putting it again in its original pot. Notocactus have crazy roots and it will fill easily. Just make sure you clean the pot with bleach or dish soap or whatever you use to do the dishes. You can also chose a pot a couple of centemeters lager than the cactus that is very deep. If you want to use deep, clay balls at the bottom is not such a bad idea but be sure that roots will still go there following the water.
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B: when they are small a pot a little larger than the root ball when they are small to restablish the roots. But as they grow they need big pots.
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C: yes it looks good enough. Let's hope it rewards you soon with the bloody red flowers!

This is a good topic i'm gonna pin it
There are more cacti in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
One of the few cactus lovers in Lebanon (zone 11a) :mrgreen:
Pompom
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

Thank you so much Elie!

Today I prepared new pots and soil for the plants as they had dried over night. Drying can take longer but in my case the plants were bone dry from beginning so it didn't take that long to dry. Now the temperature in my house is around 25 degrees in Celsius (70 F) and humidity around 35% so it won't take long for anything to dry up.

When you repot and let the roots dry, be aware of the conditions you have in the place you dry them. If we had had rain for a week rather than sunny and dry, humidity inside would've been around 60-70% which means the roots would need longer time to dry. I might've waited till the humidity drops a bit. It's better for the plant to be in the dry peat than rot later in new soil because it was way too moist for repotting. You don't need to know the exact humidity level but you can reason with the weather. I just happen to have a digital thermo- and humidity meter here in my rental apartment. I don't own it, it's just an indicator which sends information for the owner of the building.

The plants will be in sun quarantine and without water for a week now. They are not going to hang on the windowsill yet since the evening sun is so strong it would burn the repotted, new plants immediately. I broke some roots and had to cut some since there was some dead roots around too. Keeping them dry for a week ensures that the broken parts have healed and are not going to rot as soon as I water them.

I already know the species the plants are but if I didn't, I would try to identify the species in the quarantine week. Not all cacti are desert cacti, not all cacti can handle the sun same way. Melocacti for example like light but not strong sun since they are rather tropical cacti than desert cacti. Same goes with some rainforest cacti.
- According to my googling the echinocactus grusonii seems to need all the sun I can give. It's a sun loving plant and true desert cactus. Here in northern Finland the sun is not as strong as in equator and it seems in Finland the echinocactus grusonii will inevitable end up being more or less etiolated. That's just a fact I have to live with. However, I can't just put the plant under the sun after a week and I will gradually increase the sun exposure.
- According to llifle, the big boy, Notocactus roseoluteus prefers filtered bright light. Therefore I'm certainly not going to put it outside to the balcony as it can just burn there since the temperature can rise high under the full sun. I will treat it as melocactus when it comes to the light. Bright light but not full sun.
- I've read the gymnocalycium will appreciate the sun. I believe it will need as much sun as I can give it because again, we don't have that strong sunlight. Somewhere else these plants might need some shading from the strongest sunlight.

Give the plants a pot slightly bigger than their root system. Well, I didn't do it with all the plants here since the echinocactus is still a baby and the notocactus is big but the roots were half dead. As Elie said, the potting is little different with the baby cacti than the adult cacti. I'm sure the echinocactus would've appreciated slightly bigger pot I planted it in, but I'm sure it will be enough for a year. I'm going to repot it next year anyways.
Elie pointed out that notocacti have crazy roots which will recover fast. He gave me advice to put it back in a pot I bought it which was 10x10cm. I had bought it another pot which suited me better which is too 10x10cm. Since the cactus had poor roots there, I put clay balls in the bottom of the pot. I also added tiny bit of soil there so there's some soil in the bottom as the roots grow. The reason I didn't want to add normal mixture whole pot is the cactus can't handle all the water the soil holds yet. I don't want to rot the plant. I'm going to change the soil next spring again to give it more suitable soil in whole pot. I also see if the plant needs a bigger pot and how the roots have recovered.
I'm glad I bought two 10x10cm pots since the gymno too needed a pretty large pot. Don't be fooled with the size of the visible part of the plant. The pot I bought the gymno was way too small for it. The plant might seem to be overpotted and lonely now but as you already saw in earlier pictures, the pot I planted it is just fine. Actually it wouldn't hurt to plant it in slightly deeper pot either.

That's all now I believe. Have a nice day everyone!
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Pompom
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

I forgot to mention one thing! As these plants are new to me, I'm not sure how they are going to respond to my care, watering and environment in general yet, I weighed the pots with kitchen scale to know how much they should weight when "dry". I marked the weight in small sheet of paper which I taped on the bottom of the plate under the pots. I don't want to overwater the plants and the weighting is a easy way to tell when they are ready to be watered again. At some point I can tell when to water the plants again without weighting them, but for now I must use this method.
Gymno was 603 grams and notocactus 705 grams. BTW the notocactus itself weighs 207 grams... I measured it because I was interested since it was so painful to handle it. I was sure it was painful just because it was so heavy. :D It wasn't that heavy.

And about the pots! There has to be a draining hole/holes on the bottom so the water doesn't stay in the pot. Only if you're a pro and know your plant thoroughly and how much water the soil retains and how much water your plant can handle, you might can plant it in a pot without holes. Trust me, it's so much easier to just have the pot with hole. If you have a plate under the pot, be sure to empty it after watering. The plate is not needed but I like them aesthetically. I usually just lift the pot leaving the plate where it is when I move the plants to kitchen table for watering.
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DodoBrooke
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by DodoBrooke »

:cheers: They look so lovely and clean now.
I agree about peat :idea: I have also experience too much frustration with it. When I was younger I did not even remove the original soil but just add new one after buying cactus and that was a mistake. Now I don't do that but before I just did not have any nerves to detangle the mess with roots.

Few days ago I was repotting M.Bombycina of approximate height of 8 cm, when I took her out of the pot her roots were "boxed" in a little square that was just 2cm high. That square was the root system hardened with peat. Above that there was another 1cm of decorative gravels.
When I cleaned root from the peat (not so nicely as you did) it was 6 cm tall.
I have never seen such a stone hard root box in my life.

I think Bombycina is singing right now out of happiness for stretching her roots finally :D
Pompom
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

DodoBrooke wrote: Tue Jul 10, 2018 1:11 pm Few days ago I was repotting M.Bombycina of approximate height of 8 cm, when I took her out of the pot her roots were "boxed" in a little square that was just 2cm high. That square was the root system hardened with peat. Above that there was another 1cm of decorative gravels.
When I cleaned root from the peat (not so nicely as you did) it was 6 cm tall.
I have never seen such a stone hard root box in my life.

I think Bombycina is singing right now out of happiness for stretching her roots finally :D
I can imagine how hard it was! The harder and tenser the rootball with peat is, the damage of the roots will be larger. But there will be more roots so the most important thing is to get rid of the peat as good as possible.
Hopefully the Bombycina starts to grow vigorously after a while! I'm sure it's happier now!
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ElieEstephane
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by ElieEstephane »

According to llifle, the big boy, Notocactus roseoluteus prefers filtered bright light. Therefore I'm certainly not going to put it outside to the balcony as it can just burn there since the temperature can rise high under the full sun. I will treat it as melocactus when it comes to the light. Bright light but not full sun.
- I've read the gymnocalycium will appreciate the sun. I believe it will need as much sun as I can give it because again, we don't have that strong sunlight. Somewhere else these plants might need some shading from the strongest sunlight.



I think these are reversed pompom. The notocactus will easily take the full sun when acclimated. I grow mine in full unblocked sun and they respond well and grow fast.
As the for the gymnocalycium (could be quehlianum but more likely baldianum), it appreciates much more shade in normal environments. Mine only take a couple of hours of direct sun or they will start to turn red and grow slower.
There are more cacti in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
One of the few cactus lovers in Lebanon (zone 11a) :mrgreen:
Pompom
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

About the pots. Some people prefer terra cotta pots, some will go with plastic, some use glazed pots, some use ceramics. Basically everything can be a pot if it holds in the soil and plant.
I prefer terra cotta pots since in general the weather here can change dramatically from warm to cold and from dry to humid pretty fast. I don't want that my plants rot because instant change of weather. They say terra cottas will dry out faster since the material lets the humidity escape from every where.
So I knew about terra cottas and the way it works. What I've never encountered before is A WET POT. The plants had been dry for week and the I watered them. So, I watered the gymno and soon noticed the whole pot turned wet too. Not like soaking wet, but wet like the water really percolated through the pot. I think that means the soil will dry faster than in a normal terra cotta pot. And it's darkish so it'll dry faster than light pot. I have to remember that in the future.
Has anybody else ever encountered a pot which get wet? I never carry the plate with the pot when I get my plants watered so you can clearly see the difference between the wet pot and dry plate.
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Pompom
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

Again. I got new plants. Three new plants. The repotting was pretty similar from the one I did before. One really nice surprise, one ok and one horrible story.

I first started with echinopsis which was in a plastic pot with a decorative terracotta pot 7cm deep, 4cm in diameter. I was't sure what to wait from it, but it was no bad at all. It was in peat but it was dry and pretty easy to get off. At first I thought the plant is way too small for the decorative pot but after all the peat was gone I realized it really has nice and long rootsystem which easily goes to the bottom of the pot.
So I picked my "bad" scissors which won't cut anything anymore and started to drill a hole to the bottom of the pot. Now it can be used with baby cacti.
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Then I cleaned the astrophytum. It was from the different grower since it cost different amount. I have no idea what growing media it was in. It was kinda porous but kinda too stiff. And horrible to remove. It was wet and stuck to the roots. It was so stuck with the roots I had to soak the rootball in order to get the soil off, without soaking I couldn't done any better than what it seen in the second picture. For soaking I used small plastic container, pot and large matches. I filled the container with water, dropped the pot in the water and set the matches to support the plant. Of course you won't need to put any pot in the water if the container with the water is small enough (or you have long enough sticks). After couple of good socks and patient cleaning I got the roots pretty clean!
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And at last, the gymno which I wasn't sure if it's good to repot or not since it has flower buds. But the pot felt so heavy and wet I had to remove the soil. I didn't want it to rot. I'm happy I did it because the plant and roots were not in the best shape. It was in similar growing media as the astro so it was pretty painful to get clean. Since the roots got damaged and the plant doesn't look the best, I also added some cinnamon powder to the roots. It seems to work like a root hormone/healing powder and I have a successful rooting experience with it from earlier much more horrible situation https://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewto ... 10&t=39977
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ElieEstephane
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by ElieEstephane »

Very nice additions pompom! You are gonna love the echinopsis and it looks like it's of flowring size. As for the gymno (anisitii/damsii), no worries about the buds, they look advanced enough to continue undisturbed. If not, it is a very floriferous gymbocalycium given enough warmth
There are more cacti in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
One of the few cactus lovers in Lebanon (zone 11a) :mrgreen:
Pompom
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

ElieEstephane wrote: Mon Aug 06, 2018 8:47 am Very nice additions pompom! You are gonna love the echinopsis and it looks like it's of flowring size. As for the gymno (anisitii/damsii), no worries about the buds, they look advanced enough to continue undisturbed. If not, it is a very floriferous gymbocalycium given enough warmth
Some of them mature so young. It's unbelievable. I googled pictures of the echinopsis and man they get ridiculously large flowers! Can't wait to see them! And I'm looking forward to see the flowers of the gymno. I'm not sure if I ever get any of my plants naturally flower (except the shlumbergera) so this might be my first and last time to see the flowers.
Pompom
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by Pompom »

I think I'm having some kind of cactus spree going on. And I'm buying the store which sells these empty. Never mind.
This time it was pretty pleasant to unpot and clean the plants. No large surprises. Only thing was that only one of the newcomers had a tall terra cotta pot which I wanted to use of course (you can see it backround in the first picture). I decided to put a plant with largest roots in it.
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Winner was the mammillaria camptotricha with 12.5 cm (4.9 inches). Before I didn't know this particular species does have spectacular root system naturally, but I read in llifle that they should have roots "very large". I'm also happy I was able to find the species from internet since unlike many other cacti, this one tends to be little soft and spongy. I would've been really worried if I didn't know that.
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The unpotting never fails to surprise me. Even though every single one had really nice roots, one had a different way to live. It likes to go up with the body and the roots. I never seen one like this before, I don't have any experience with roots like this, but we'll see how it works out. It's really healthy looking plant.
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TimN
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Re: Free the roots!

Post by TimN »

keith wrote: Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:27 pm soon every weed growing in the gravel had root mealie bug. my bad. :cry:
LOL, that's one way to keep the weeds under control!
Disclaimer: I'm in sunny Arizona, so any advice I give may not apply in your circumstances.

Tim
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