Over the last three years, I have been buying almost any cacti that took my fancy from supermarkets, plant shops, IKEA and more recently from Cactus Shop which has provided an excellent service. The collection has outgrown windowsills so I recently constructed my first cactus house in the sunny end of the garden using cast-off wood and a couple of glass doors I salvaged from an old cabinet. The house stands on an old double glazed kitchen door covered in washed sand and with a 35w heating cable through the sand which I switch on for cold nights. Everything seems to be growing great guns and I'm currently identifying my collection to see which are frost hardy and can stay in the house over winter and which ones will have to come into the house to keep a reasonable minimum temperature. I measure the temperature via a Lidl digital remote LCD thermometer and keep the doors open during hot days. It has gone up to 35 recently so I may need to add some sort of shading.
After browsing the forum I have also bought The Encyclopedia of Cacti, Cullmann. Gotz and Groner which I saw recommended on the forum which is proving most interesting and useful. I am now making my own soil mix with peat compost, washed sharp builder's sand and perlite which seems to be doing the job at a fraction of the price of the ready-made stuff.
The cactus house lives on a raised concrete platform at the end of a 90foot SE facing garden which gets the sun all day. My Gymnocalcium / Echinopsis ragonesii has been pumping out beautiful red flowers for the last couple of weeks but I guess with no others in the area then she is probably waiting in vain for her love!
Finally, I got a very nice letter from Les Hewitt of the Dartford Branch welcoming me to the society and I hope to be going to a meeting very soon and of course Cactus Live in September.
Kind regards and hello to all, Ian in Welling - I look forward to meeting some of you in person in the near future.
