Dank indeed. Curiously I've had some cacti flower (turbs) without any water at all, presumably occult precipitation since the air has been sodden for months. They normally take a drink to get going. I work most of the time on Dartmoor blanket bog, we had 650mm rain for Feb, more than three times the...

In the 20 years or so I've been growing cacti I can't remember a worse, later spring than that we're experiencing at the moment (I'm in Devon). Constant low cloud, continuous rain, howling winds, and almost no sun at all. Although the temperatures aren't actually that low, the sun being almost entir...

So anybody else given them a drink yet? I will tomorrow, buds on turb. valdezianus close to opening, lots of buds on stenocactus, lots of new spine growth. 21.5c in the polytunnel today.

I think the choice is between fleece with slightly higher temperature and high humidity/ very poor air circulation on one hand, and no fleece and lower temperatures/ better air circulation/lower humidity on the other. Given that the plants you've been losing look like botyrtis cinerea deaths, I bet ...

And presto!

Those are doing really well! Faster than some of my seedlings of "easy" genera, which are also watered, but not heated, over winter (and seemed to have survived the cold snap without issues). Thanks, yeah they seem unusually happy, I've got quire lot of larger blossfeldia from seed, but t...

My Blossfeldia seedlings seem to be an RSM magnet, along with Lophophora. I will get rid of them one day, be it RSM, or the seedlings, I still haven't decided. The species should start differ one day, but geography takes part in separating species quite often, maybe this was the case here as well? ...

Lovely. Will the cactus shed ever re-open? That was yours, wasn’t it? Yes that's me! Yes will definitely reopen in spring, I have literally 1000s of plants that need to be sold. Last 12 months have been very busy with moving house, getting married, moving entire collection of plants etc, so never g...

I like growing Blossfeldias. These are about a year old I think, overwintering under lights, but would be fine not doing so. Matchhead for scale. Some starting to flower. These are apparently 4 different species, but perhaps a case of overexcited collectors? The first have mostly gone blind and look...

I used to use heat mats for speeding up seed raising, and if you want to go that way, I used the ROOT!T heat mats, which were always very reliable. These days, I don't bother, instead I just box in my grow lights well, and the residual heat from the t8 flourescents I use keeps the temperature at aro...