Today I cut off some fronds off a huge cactus; will they root just from a cutting and putting in regular potting soil, or do I need a special medium and an additive for it to take root?
You response is always very appreciative.
Durian Man.
Durian Man,
Do you know what species it is? I’m not sure what you mean by fronds off a cactus – can you send a picture?
For most cactus and succulents you can let the cutting dry for a week and then plant it into fast draining cactus soil, not regular potting soil, and it should root.
Some need rooting hormones, some need extra heat, some need to be planted in the right season to root, and a few won’t root from cuttings at all.
Peter
Lotus “Gold Flash” is a creeping vining semi-deciduous perennial with herbaceous tendencies.
If we get a cold winter it’ll totally defoliate and die back down to the ground, but will reliably come back every year in our mild climate. In Michigan, I can’t be sure, especially up in the U.P.
And then these flame-tip triple flowers get going throughout the spring and summer and the mind boggles at the shock.
Speaking of which, I haven’t played Boggle in about 10 years, since I only ever played with my sister Abby (who prefers Abigail, but you know brothers…) and she lives in Texas.
By the way, those flowers, from stem to tip, are only about an inch.
(T)he roof of Port Coquitlam’s new Walmart Supercentre was quiet and serene. To the east the view of the coastal mountains was spectacular and the lush foliage on the banks of the Pitt River created a wall of green. But it was the 220,000 hand-planted sedums and succulents that were taking root on Walmart’s roof that drew one’s attention.
The tiny, colourful, drought-tolerant plants that more-rightly belonged in rock crevices or an alpine meadow stretched out as far as the eye could see.
Sounds like Canada. Let’s look up this Port Coquitlam. And… it’s in British Columbia, so you know it’s gonna be pretty.
Well, the park’s new gym equipment is pretty.
And the trails are nice and neat and cleaned up too.
Last year I posted about a succulent thief working the Bernal Heights section of San Francisco, and this year someone has photographed a possible culprit. I won’t post the photo, but you can click through to the SF Weekly to see for yourself.
Police are baffled by a string of plants thefts in Bernal Heights, where someone has been snipping off large sections of succulents from various homes.
The most recent case happened this week, when a resident called police to report that someone had ripped some cacti from their front yard…
The good news is the thief appears to be an idiot.
But what really bothers (Officer Harry) Soulette is the fact that these crooks clearly don’t know much about gardening.
“They are chopping them off at the wrong place — they are killing them,” Soulette says. “So if they are taking them for the purpose of replanting them, then they are just damaging them, which is why we think they are just doing it to be malicious.”
Carole with Greenscape Associates sends along this unusual photo of a Cactus Footstool.
It’s hard to figure out exactly what’s going on. Here’s a Tiger Footstool in the same line.
And the whole line.
Does it make sense yet? Here’s what they say about it.
Flexible seating or footrest in the shape of an egg (tato) or a sphere (tatino) in CFC-free flexible polyurethane, with internal anatomical rigid structure and plastic base. Original photographic images printed on the bi-elastic technical-fabric cover. Once the cover is fit, the image becomes three-dimensional.
If you want to buy it you have to request a price quote first, or get your architect to order it for you.
We bought this plant from you about 1.5 years ago. It has, up to now, been doing great. Last August we moved to a warmer climate (90-100 degree days in summer). I increase watering to once a week when the temperature goes up. In Spring and Fall I water apx. every 10 days, and in winter every 3 weeks.
Our plant thrived last fall, winter and early spring and there was a lot of new growth. About a month ago I noticed that some of the leaves were turning yellow, withering, and dropping off. Initially I thought I needed to water more and made sure I was on the 1x a week schedule. This hasn’t helped and the problems continuing. Please help with any advice! I’m worried about the plant, it’s dropping more and more leaves.
I’ve attached some photos- I hope they help.
Thanks,
Larkin
Larkin,
The plant has scale and possibly mealy bugs, but it’s hard to tell from the photos. It sounds like you’re watering the right amount, but you may want to check to make sure the soil is dry between waterings, and then water.
I would recommend fertilizing and spraying for the pests. We use neem oil for scale and mealy bugs, and we mix our own nutrients for cactus that we call “Cactus Meal”. I would also suggest using Liquid Kelp right now to help it. If you are still in Northern Cal. you could bring the plant by and we can take a closer look, as well as set you up with neem and the nutrients.
Q: Can you really cut open a barrel cactus and find enough water to survive?
A:You will not find drinkable water inside a cactus. First of all, a cactus is not hollow inside like a water bottle. Secondly, the slimy liquid found inside the tissue of a cactus will actually make you sick if you drink it. Please bring plenty of water with you when you go into the desert and you will never be tempted to kill a cactus for water.
Smart advice. Who is this Ranger B?
“Ranger B,” Brennan Basler has been the interpretive ranger at the Usery Mountain Regional Park in Mesa for nearly half of his seven-year career as park ranger.
The world loves a blooming cactus! They’ll write whole articles just so they can include a blooming cactus photo. Like this one from Bakersfield.
Containers provide a lot of color and interest in the Bovi-Pickard back yard; at right, Doug is watering while Sherly is checking out her favorite cactus blooms
A close-up of cactus blooming in the Bovi-Pickard back yard; they are the third owners of the the first house built in Golden Hills (by Zella Young) in 1967.
Again with newspaper publishing cactus photos without naming the plants. Local news!
Caroline from Marin sends us 2 photos of her recently planted succulents.
I purchased this cactus from you about a month ago. The leaves are slowly turning black, almost as if they are burning? I live in Marin and it recorded full sun almost all day. Any advice?
Thanks, Caroline
Hi. I purchased this aloe plant from you about a month ago and sent a note last week because I was concerned it wasn’t doing well. It seems to be getting worse. Here is a recent picture. Any suggestions what could be wrong?
Thanks, Caroline
Hap was gracious enough to provide an extensive answer discussing Mediterranean climate plants in Mediterranean climate summers (That’s us!)
Caroline,
Both of your plants, Aeonium “Sunburst” and the Aloe striata are winter growing plants from Mediterranean Climates just like ours (the Aeonium is from the Canary Islands and the Aloe from South Africa), where all the rain is in the winter months and summers are basically a long drought.
To deal with this they have a summer dormancy period (just like many native Californian plants) where they shut down and nap for the summer and then wake up with the onset of the winter rains and start their active growth stage.
The Aeonium deals with the summer dormancy by letting some of the lower leaves dry out and curl up, to reduce surface area exposed to the sun and the Aloe by doing something similar as well as developing Carotenoids (red and orange pigments) that are more resistant to UV during the long hot summers and increase in the intensity of the sunlight and UV.
Both of the plants you sent photos of look normal for this time of year and should take off with new growth in October and November and really look great by the Holiday season. You can keep them slightly awake and looking “garden fresh” with an occasional drink (weekly to every two weeks), but do not over water in the summer, since it can lead to rot and infections, since while they are dormant they have a harder time fighting off infections.
Eriogonum grande v. rubescensis from San Miguel Island of the Channel Islands National Park.
The rubescens is for the red flowers. The grande is for the big leaves, as far as buckwheats go.
We give them full sun, but then we’re at the coast just like the islands they come from. On the other hand further inland they need some afternoon shade to be at their prettiest.
They will bloom on and off for months through the summer, and yet they don’t need summer water after the first year in the ground. I assume that is because they’re native to clay soils.
Butterflies love them. Deer might too, but we don’t have deer very often down here in the Berkeley Flats, so we watch the butterflies instead.
Cacti and succulents of all shapes and sizes will be available for viewing and purchase at the show and sale. The Henry Shaw Cactus and Succulent Society sale July 23 through July 31.
Robin Cooper gets questions on the British Radio. Bites on your cactus – are they head lice? No! But they’re screaming! And they have families too! The lady finally tells Robin that she’ll pray for the baby beetles before she kills them with insecticides.
Apparently there’s a newspaper in the next town over from Berkeley and they have a cactus that blooms so it’s featured in the newspaper every year. They don’t know what it is, but they don’t stop over here and ask us, now do they? Reporters should call us you know, we’d answer all their questions for them.
Long-time residents know that the plants bloom once a year, subject to the vagaries of weather and traffic. At one time, there were more cacti in the group with multi-colored flowers, but so far this year we just have a single bloom atop one plant.
Gardeners will probably know the names of the plants, but for most of us, the beauty is in the patterns and the blooms.
Geez, don’t reporters have phones anymore?
Not sure what variety of succulent this might be, but it’s an interesting visual effect.
Oh, the humanity. Should we tell them what they are?
Keith tosses snails onto the roof. This snail is crawling back down the wall, from a height of about 22 feet. Brave snail! Do you think it will make it all the way down to safety?
I suppose this photo is a bit hard to read, so at the top of the photo there is blue, that is the sky. I am standing 18ft. below the snail looking up at a solid concrete wall with a snail crawling down from the metal cap flashing on the roof parapet, with it’s slime showing the trail down. Does that make more sense now?
Green paper, glue, scissors, about 20 or 30 spaghetti noodles and something to use as a pattern (I used a wooden spoon)
….
Picture 6 – Finished
These make great 3-D table decorations for a party and they are also a great take-home item for the party too. Have the kids sit at a table and have the cactus cut out ahead of time. That way they only have to take one side of the flat paper and paint with glue. Have them add spaghetti and they have a wall hanging to bring home or add a magnet to the back for the fridge.
You’ll have to click through for the rest of the photos, not to mention instructions numbers 2 through 5. Nice! But I don’t recommend trying this with more than 1 kid at a time as suggested by the author. Getting a bunch of kids together can only mean HAVOC! Spaghetti noodles everywhere! Strips of cut up cactus papers on the floor, glue on the chairs, magnets stuck to the underside of the couch. And imagine the horror if there were a dog in the room too. Too much!!!
We missed the Santa Cruz Cactus Festival again this year. I’m sure it proved to be delicious. It was last weekend.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel hasn’t posted the winners online yet, but they did post this Nopales Salad recipe for us to share with you so you could enjoy it.
1. Slice nopales into thin strips. Saute in olive oil till just browned, but not soft.
2. When cool, toss with other ingredients. Add more lime , if necessary.
3. Serve in a chilled bowl, or iceberg lettuce cups, or on a crisp tortilla. Sprinkle with queso fresco.
Cheryl Marquez grows her own cactus for nopales dishes at her Tortilla Flats restaurant in Soquel (Dan Coyro/Sentinel)
Hey! If you’re paying close attention to this blog then you realize I already featured this plant last year and the year before that too. It must be a pretty reliable bloomer for me to keep photographing it year after year and posting it here for you to enjoy. Maybe it’s a sign that you should grow it too and enjoy it year round in your own home.
