Cactus Blog 

Robots seem to love living at the nursery – they don’t mind the cold weather we’ve been having at all. I wonder if they’ve been coming in at night after we’ve all left the store?

He seems happy enough. Maybe a little surprised that we leave them alone at night with the run of the grounds.

Hi Peter & Hap,

This is my first time writing to you. Hope u can help me save a plant in my backyard.

I bought this cactus plant from you guys about a year ago and it has been growing well in the flower bed until recently, I found it sinking down a bit and then tilted to the side. I was trying to reposition it and to my suprise, I found it totally detached from its roots. Upon close exam, the root system has been eaten away. There have been some gopher’s problem in other part of my backyard, so I suspect it may be the gopher which did that because there is a big hole/ tunnel right underneath its stem.

My question is whether there is any way I can save this plant. I have taken it out from the flower bed and planted it in a pot with some new soil for now. To me, it looks like the other cactus sitting right next to it in the flower bed. Is that sufficient, or should I do anything else?

I have also put one of those smoky thing (don’t know what it’s called) into the tunnel, and installed a sonice device in the flower bed. Hope that will take care of the gopher(s). Will keep an eye on the other cactus as well to make sure it will not got killed like the other one.

I have attached a few photos for your reference.

Thanks.

Romy

Romy,

Sorry it has taken a few days to get back to you, I was out of town for a few days. Your chewed up Yucca elephantipes “Silver Star” can be treated like a cutting and it should re-root. Pull off a few of the bottom leaves (bare about three inches of the stem) and then pot up in cactus soil, this time of year it may help to use rooting hormones, which we do carry, however Yuccas root fairly easily so you may get by without it…. Put somewhere warm and dry, inside is fine as long as there is good light or leave outside in a protected spot. Inside it should develop roots in a couple of months, out side it may take until spring. If you do move it in for the winter make sure and “harden it off” in the spring when you move it back outside, as it will loose its resistance to UV light indoors and get sunburned if you move directly out in to the sun. To harden it off, start in the shade and over a few weeks move it every few days so it gets more morning sunlight until in gets a “suntan”.

You might want to think about adding a few of the spurge style Euphorbia to your garden, as the sap in both the above ground and in the roots is so nasty it discourages gophers from burrowing around them.

Take care,

Hap

Thanks so much for your information. It is actually the first plant we put in the flower bed. My wife loves it. Thanks to you she is less stressed now knowing that we can still save it. I will also try to put some Euphorbia in it later on as well.

Really appreciate your advice.

Romy

Affordable Accoutrements has a cactus on the table.

A very scenic photo ensues. (“Scenic” in the old-english-countryside-with-follies sense of the word.)

From Amy Stewart at Garden Rant:

…You’ll walk into the garden center and walk around for a little while, lost and confused, until some helpful employee walks up and asked you what you’re looking for. You won’t want to ask, because it sounds so weird, but eventually you’ll have no choice but to say, “Uh—do you have—uh—any clay spheres?”

The employee will light up and say, “Of course. They’re over here.” He or she will lead you to the section in the garden center where they keep flowerpots. There, among the pots, will be these things. Clay spheres. There’s really no other way to describe them….

Actually, I like to refer to them as “clay balls” to our customers. We have them scattered around the nursery so you can see them in action. They are an oddity that some people just have to have. What are ya gonna do?

The small ones are solid, but the large ones are hollow! The glazed balls have a bottom, with a large hole.

Browning St.

Aloe arborescens. I like this plant when planted up against a structure more than when planted out in the median strip. I like the massing effect.

Here’s the same plant in a planting strip on Page St., and I don’t like the mounding as much.

It’s still pretty. of course, and the blooming is quite impressive. But I have my preferences and there is nothing you can do to make me change my mind.

Mulch Maven, from J Peterson Garden Design in Austin, TX, uploaded a succulent centerpiece, with bright red candle, on twitpic.

Let’s see what we can identify in the photo. I see: Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, Sedum spurium, Crassula nudicaulis, Echeveria imbricata, Sedum “Blue Spruce”, Sempervivum arachnoides, a Mammillaria, and some others too!

The L.A. Times says they’re featuring our Tillandsia Wreaths in Saturday’s paper! Woohoo!

If you get the Times, check it out, and send us a copy too, OK?

66th Street

Opuntia “Maverick” and an Aeonium, probably A. subplanum. Plus a crassula and a small Opuntia subulata. The opuntia is a very fast grower, so since this photo was taken years ago, I wonder how big it is now? Hmmm….

I was on the road the last 3 days, so I didn’t know just how cold it got in Berkeley – down to 30! I think it may even have gotten colder in some spots. The crew got frost blankets up on some sensitive plants, but we still took some damage on a few plants. I hope you didn’t take too much damage last night.

I suspect we’ll see some dead Jade trees throughout the Bay Area, and the Agave attenuatas that were unprotected probably got tip damage. The Aeoniums should lose some leaves, but be OK overall.

From the LA Times at Home blog, I see one of the most interesting and reasonably priced gift items of the year. Moss Hills.

Yes, Moss Hills. From Krislyn Komarov.

One of her more affordable introductions this year: “moss hills,” 1-foot-wide assemblages of dyed moss that are arranged into simple, lovely tablescapes. (In the Krislyn’s store, they also call these pieces moss pets.) They start at $80 and can be ordered online.

I like this.

62nd Street

Aeonium “Schwartzkopf”

These winter growing succulents are really taking off around here these days. Of course, this photo was taken over 5 years ago, so it must also have been a winter photo. Did you know that this was cultivated from the Aeonium arboreum species?

Growing succulents for green roofs is becoming a big business. We’ve sold some, but you really need to work in large volumes, and we’re too urban for that.

On the other hand, Southern Maryland seems like it would be the perfect place.

John Shepley shows one of the many green roof plants grown on the farm. (Photo by Maryland Newsline’s Lindsay Gsell)

Rows and rows of small sedums, delosperma and other green roof plants sit below, soaking up the sun in their newly insulated home.

These plants have been the sole focus and cash crop of the farm since 1998. Nearly a million of them are grown each year for green roofs around the country, says Shepley, a former electrical engineer who is now co-owner of the business.

The National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Walter Reed Community Center in Washington, D.C., and Radio Shack’s World Headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, are among the farm’s more than 400 clients.

Wow.

Try low to the ground cycling through Saguaro National Park.

Cactus Forest Drive at Saguaro National Park East.

The paved eight-mile loop drive is a scenic treasure…

9th Street

Agave attenuata

From the Jackson (MS) Free Press.

Buy little succulents and plant them in mismatched tea cups

That’s very bossy of them down there in Jackson, although it is a good idea. Possible even an adorable idea.

Here’s one on flickr. Yes, it is a teacup succulent. An anacampseros to be exact.

8th Street

Opuntia ficus-indica is one of the most delicious of all the delicious cacti.

We got a call about a sick cactus in San Francisco, and I asked for photos, so this is what we got. The plant has gotten afternoon sun (as much as there is in SF) and watered once per month.

Here ya go. Let me know if you need more pictures.

Thanks!
Stafford

Stafford,
You have an infestation of insects – both Scale and Mealy Bugs. They are damaging the crown of your plant. You need to treat this ASAP. We recommend Neem Oil (100%, not “rose defense” which is cut with petroleum products) which will kill the pests and help prevent fungal infections, and is safe to spray directly on cactus (although preferably not in full sun.) Spray thoroughly, and again weekly.

As the crown is damaged, you will need to watch carefully to make sure the plant doesn’t get soft, which could indicate infection. If it gets to that point, I would recommend bringing it in to us to take a look, but don’t wait so long that the plant has died.

Good luck, and give me a call, or stop by the nursery, if you have any other questions.
Peter

The past 2 days I posted photos of a cereus and an aloe from over 5 years ago.

Today I have the pictures of them as they are today.

7th Street – Aloe arborescens – much bigger and fuller with more bloom stalks.

6th Street – Cereus – dead, behind the no parking sign.

From across the pond, we find the british are asking all the right questions in this time of rising fuel bills and economic turmoil:

How do you keep tender plants alive without resorting to a greenhouse heater? Lia Leendertz has some answers

I wonder what her answers could be? Shall we read on?

We shall!

I patched up the cracks and bought a whole new roll of bubblewrap, plus those fancy attachers that hold the bubblewrap away from the glass, so creating an extra layer of insulating air. I have painstakingly covered every inch of glass, overlapping generously at every seam. I have lined the base of the walls with thick layers of cardboard, and moved the table away from the sunny side, so the sun can shine on the paving and heat it up. I made a door of overlapping bubblewrap flaps that ET’s captors would have been proud of and I have fleece to hurl directly over the plants when it gets really cold, and some of those fleece bags to put over the larger plants. This weekend, I will move in a water butt, and fill it up, the idea being that it regulates temperature, preventing the surrounding air from getting either too hot, or I pray too cold.

Those are actually all pretty good ideas. Especially making the greenhouse into an ET-like prison.

V and Jaxx come visiting.

7th Street

Aloe arborescens

Continuing with  my series of succulent photos from around Berkeley that were taken over 5 years ago, we see the ActivSpace building had some pretty full blooming aloes back then. They’re even bigger and bloomier now. Maybe I should do some comparison photos. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Since that photo was taken, they opened a lovely and delicious french bistro that then closed, reopened under new ownership, closed again, and now a small sandwich shop has taken its place. The best I can say about the current sandwich shop was that the french bistro was delicious.

Ceanothus “Julia Phelps”

The ceanothuses are coming into bloom, just like the arctostaphyloses. That’s what happens when the winter rains start up around here. And we’ll see various species and varieties continue blooming through spring. So we always like the ones that are early bloomers.

This variety forms a really nice medium height, wide-spreading-but-not-too-wide shrub. Makes a good cover plant for native hillsides, although more compact than some of the lower-growing groundcover ceanothuses. Also will work well in a small yard or as a street shrub. Can be pruned to create the perfect shape, but just not so severe to be a hedge. I like them in their more wild form.

Oh Colly, we hardly knew you.

I found a stash of old Berkeley Succulent photos. I don’t know how old they are, but they’re not posted on the blog, so maybe they were posted on my previous blog 5 years ago or more. So they’re new to you. I checked the archives, and they are from before 2005.

Enjoy!

6th Street

Cereus hildmannianus, probably subsp. uruguayanus. Possibly C. repandus.

This particular plant I drive by every day on the way to the nursery, and I can tell you that this photo is a record of the plant at it’s prime. It’s no longer at it’s prime. In fact, it’s now dead. You can still drive by and see the wasted corpse of the plant if you want, but it’s not as pretty as this when it was thriving.

Arctostaphylos rudis “Vandenberg”

We are at the start of manzanita bloom season. The earliest bloomers are starting. We should have species blooming from now until May. Nice!

Claude in Arlington, Texas has posted a prickly pear jelly recipe on his blog, Random Rants and Prickly Plants. Plus, there’s been some canning going on this year too, and some cactus tarts are the result. They look delicious.

Prickly Pear Jelly
1 quart of Prickly Pears (or Tuna as they’re called) to yield 2 1/2 cups of juice
1 package powdered pectin (the liquid doesn’t work for this recipe)
3 Tablespoons lemon or lime juice
3 1/2 cups sugar

Click through for the rest. And this was in response to our search for cactus candies over the last few days. Behold the power of blogs!

I wonder if I can get Hap to try this. He would know how to.