Cactus Blog 

We mix our own cactus soil, designed for everyone who lives other than in the desert, so there’s no sand in it at all, which is a good ingredient if you live in the desert, but we don’t. One of our regulars asked a question about the ingredients in our mix.

Hi Hap,

I was looking at your pre-mixed soil for sale (the one that’s recommended for a very fast draining soil for cacti); I noticed that there is a percentage of COIR in the mix. Doesn’t that retain moisture, thus, creating a less desirable draining vehicle. Maybe it has some other attributes that justifies it’s addition to the mix…

Thanks,
Faraz

Now, I would answer this differently than Hap, who does a good job of just getting down to basics. I would have said something along the lines of Yes, it does hold some moisture – all plants need some moisture… But that would have been rude of me, so it’s a good thing Hap answered instead.

Faraz,

Our soil mix is mostly lava and pumice, the organic materials are coir and composted rice-hulls. Both of them are nice and rot resistant, both being the seed-husks of water transported seeds, means they are filled with natural anti-fungal properties, which leads to long term soil stability and healthy plants. Coir and rice-hulls can last eight to ten years in potting soil. Commonly used peat only lasts about two to three years, and has a host of other drawbacks as well…. The coir and rice-hulls are both “long fiber”, so they do hold moisture, but not too much. They also “bond” nutrients well, so the slow release complex organic fertilizer we add has a good life span in the soil mix.

Hap

Euphorbia “Redwing” is a hybrid spurge, as if you didn’t know that. It is very similar to Euphorbia characias, but for the red bloom structures. I wonder what those are called?

And it is hybridized from… E. amygdaloides x E. martinii, which we learned yesterday is a hybrid from E. amygdaloides and E. characias. Very interesting.

The unique characteristic of this variety is the red flower stems, which were green last fall, but turn bright red in late winter, even before the profusion of chartreuse or as some would say sulfur-yellow blooms in spring. I had to get down on the ground to capture the foliage under those all-encompassing blooms. These turn out to be quite attractive to bees. Yay!

Mr. Subjunctive links to a site with some startlingly close-up photos of cactus.

Did I mention the startle factor?

It’s called A Closeup Look at Some Members of the Cactus Family, or some such thing. And it’s by a Canadian who goes by Brian Johnston, according to the site. Did I mention how cool it is?

Jenny at J Peterson Blog has a tree trunk photo. Oh, and it’s covered in caterpillars. Oh Nos! I’ll bet they’ve already stripped those leaves bare.

Euphorbia x martinii – I don’t know what this is a cross between, so let me look it up. As it is there are dozens of cultivars of this hybrid. I’ll bet it’s one of the German hybrids. Well, the answer is as simple as it appears: E. amygdaloides x E. characias. Now you know.

Science!

Euphorbia Characias ssp. wulfenii

Now that’s a showy spurge, but quite restrained in it’s mature size of only around 2 to 3 feet tall.

All the euph’s are blooming, so I was thinking maybe this could be spurge week. What do you think?

A customer brought in this lovely stone bowl, and Keith helped her pick out some lovely sempervivums to fill it out.

Bambusa tuldoides grown as a street tree. Good thing its a clumping bamboo, or there could be shoots coming up across the street, in the neighbors yard, etc…

Ceanothus “Blue Jeans” has whorls of deep lavender flowers. Does deep lavender mean it’s purple? I wonder about these things. Anyway, this is one of the deer-resistant holly-leaf ceanothuses. Forms a dense shrub that is just coming into a full flush of bloom.

It’s an extra special custom knob from the Bucksnort Lodge. You too can take home a piece of the lodge for your own home. I recommend using these fine antique copper finish knobs on your dresser drawers. That would be best. But not for the bottom smaller drawers you use for socks and underwear; these knobs would overwhelm those two lower drawers.

BuckSnort Lodge B132 Designer Knobs

I see that Mr. Subjunctive is planning for the zombie apocalypse by buying plants. An excellent strategy, indeed!

He has a number of excellent succulent choices, including the ever fascinating Pedilanthus, and some other houseplant thingys too. I think he should also add astelia to his list. And you? What are you doing to prepare for the zombies?

Arctostaphylos densiflora “Howard McMinn” is a really nice, deeply-red-barked, twisted-branched medium-height California-native manzanita that has a large showing of pink-tinged bell-shaped blooms this time of year.

They are not to be used as a border plant, as they are only to be used as a centerpiece for a small garden. OK, you can also use them as a feature plant in a larger garden. And they can occasionally be brought indoors in colder areas to be a houseplant sitting in a very bright window, but never in a green pot. Mustard and Burnt Umber are the preferred pot colors.

They can also be bonsai’ed, but that will take a lot of work to reestablish and maintain.

I don’t know anything about the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, except that it starts this weekend. Are there succulents? I don’t know! Are there orchids? Who can say! Are there proteas? Snapdragons? Chocolate bunnies? Only time will tell…

…and anyone else who gardens in San Francisco  too. CBS Channel 5 is reporting that organic compost being given away by the city is anything but. Don’t read this report while eating.

It’s called biosolids compost and its being given away by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission for use in school and community gardens, and homes. But… that material is actually treated sewage sludge….

The problem is what often comes with it: toxins, from businesses, hospitals, heavy industry.

“Flame retardants, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, steroids, hormones, PCB’s, all kinds of nasty stuff,” said Paige Tomaselli with the Center for Food Safety….

(T)he position of one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s own experts: “This material should be kept away from the public,” said Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA. “The EPA did a study a year ago of sewage sludge from all over the country and found large amounts of hazardous material in all of the sludges,” he said.

via La Vida Locavore.

Anigozanthos viridis “Phar Lap” has the most sparkling aqua buds, that open into these deep rich green blooms. Tantalizing…

It’s good news in the Southern Tablelands of Australia – the amphibians are making a comeback.

“Extinct” yellow-spotted bell frog found after 30 years

OK, so if you read the article, they’re not making a comeback so much as hiding out and doing their best to avoid people.

(From Central Mexico)

Sometimes a day is a little brighter than the rainclouded overcast sky would allow; in the simple pleasures like this fat, long-leafed succulent.

Pachyphytum longifolium

Photo of a mature specimen in habitat.

Debra Lee Baldwin’s Agave potatorum is starting to bloom, as told on Gardening Gone Wild.

She wonders what to do with all the plantlets that will result. Any ideas of how she can share them, maybe while on her book tour?

We feature Lipson Robotics at the nursery, and the newest ones have rayguns! We don’t have any with rayguns. 🙁

I bet they’ll be up on etsy soon.

Yucca valida from my open back door. No way you’re getting me out there. Except to walk the dogs, of course.

It’s raining, again, and we’re a cactus blog, so to the google!

And up comes this interesting thing. Apparently it’s a type of musical instrument, and they’re available for purchase from the Lizard King.

Rainsticks: These beautiful & high quality natural rain sticks are made in South America from dried cactus. They have a natural tan color with yarn trim. We carry several sizes of these wonderfully soothing instruments at fair prices. The longer the rain stick, the longer the duration of sound.

From CNN we find out a common herbicide used in the US but banned in Europe may be the leading cause of falling amphibian populations.

Atrazine, a weed killer widely used in the Midwestern United States and other agricultural areas of the world, can chemically “castrate” male frogs…

Farmers in the United States continue to use atrazine on crops The herbicide has been a long-standing favorite among corn, sorghum and sugarcane farmers because t is affordable and can eliminate the need for tilling it is affordable and can eliminate the need for tilling the soil. Tens of millions of pounds of atrazine are used each year in the United States.

Anigozanthos “Bush Diamond”

These are the most subtle of the colors of Kangaroo Paws I have ever seen. And by subtle, I mean nobody ever buys them, and yet here I am putting them out again.

Will I never learn?!?

No! I will not ever learn! I like them and that’s enough for me.

Click on the image to see the much bigger version. Get right close in and see all those beautiful subtle hairs on those blooms.

I purchased these a little over a year ago from your Cactus Jungle. They seemed to be doing well, then suddenly developed this white substance at the end of the spines. At first it was just on the larger “barrel” cactus, but now it is on one of the smaller ones, too. Also, one of the smaller ones “shrunk” into the rocks. I see the white substance also on the flesh of the cactus. The spines come out easily and it seems to be shrinking. Do you have a diagnosis? What treatment, if any?

Thank you very much for your help. I really enjoy these cacti and want them to survive.

Nancy 🙂

Nancy, it appears that your cactus have spine-mealy bugs. They can be treated with a paintbrush and rubbing alcohol and a treating with neem oil.

The cactus that shrunk into the soil appears to have passed on.

If you can bring them down to us we’d be able to treat them and figure out more definitively what’s going on.

Ian

More from Ian after the break… (more…)

We’re going big into birdfeeders and birdhouses this year. Here’s our new bird tree display.

We’re waiting for the rain to start. And for the tsunami to hit. Makes for an interesting day.

These are tiny little euphorbia blooms, and I didn’t see the aphids until I was working on the photos, and there they are! Click the photo to see the larger, more aphid-y version.

Euphorbia characias blooms and aphids.

Be assured, those aphids are already gone, long before this photo makes it onto the blog.