another cactus id please

[DaveW]

"I am new to cactI, usually it is "heather" and "thistles" that grow well with me!!"

Try growing "melon thistles" then Carly, an old name for Melocactus!(:P)

No seriously don't since they are a bit tricky. I can never manage to keep them more than a year or so since they don't like the winter rest with me, even in the house.

DaveW

[Phil Hocking]

Same here Dave, I've given up trying with the things. I wonder why we don't grow thistles actually, they are quite attractive prickly things, and easy. There are probably quite a lot of different ones too. Some people on our allotments seem to collect them.

Somerset Phil

[IanW]

I've not lost a Melo yet in the greenhouse (touch wood!), but I think the key is almost certainly mainly just heat?

My Melos are all positioned towards the centre of the greenhouse where the heater is and as I try to keep the whole greenhouse at a minimum of 10 - 15C the area the Melos were at was almost certainly closer to 20C - 25C and probably not ever dropping below 15C on the coldest of nights. I gave them a drop of water every couple of weeks and repotted them all around the end of March and all had healthy roots, bar my M. matanzanus that was already largely rootless even before the winter but that seems to have recovered now (see Robert's Melo thread).

Out of interest then, what kind of temperatures do those of you who have had trouble with Melos keep them at over winter?

I'm growing some M. andinus from seed which are higher altitude Melos from around 2000 - 2500m IIRC which isn't exactly massively high altitude but high enough to have to deal with colder temperatures. There is another species that grows at even higher altitudes again but it's name escapes me at the moment. If enough make it as seedlings I'll certainly try one or two at lower temperatures, maybe in a cold frame or simply a cooler part of the house over winter and hopefully may even have some spare for people to have. Of course it'll be a couple of years yet before they're a reasonable size to try this but it'll make an interesting experiment to see if there are at least some Melos that are a little less fussy - I can't imagine at 7000ft+ they get guaranteed warm weather daily all year around, there must be some extended periods of cold surely?

[DaveW]

I think the problem is temperature and water Ian. I usually tend to dry them off over winter in the house and I think Marlon said they don't like this. If you keep them warm night and day you can continue to water and keep their roots going. Perhaps puting them in my heated seed propagator over winter whilst it's not in use for seed raising would be the answer, plus keeping the compost regularly watered?

DaveW

[Jeff S]

Carly M Wrote:
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I am new to cactI, usually it is"heather" and "thistles" that grow well with me!!

Hi Carly, welcome to the forum, I'm a nettle and dandelion man myself.

[IanW]

DaveW Wrote:
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> I think the problem is temperature and water Ian.
> I usually tend to dry them off over winter in the
> house and I think Marlon said they don't like
> this. If you keep them warm night and day you can
> continue to water and keep their roots going.
> Perhaps puting them in my heated seed propagator
> over winter whilst it's not in use for seed
> raising would be the answer, plus keeping the
> compost regularly watered?
>
> DaveW

Yeah I'd think a heated propagator would do fine.

For what it's worth there were a couple I didn't water quite as frequently, one I forgot to water for about a month and a half, possibly two months (because I had it sat away from my other Melos and forgot about it) yet it also didn't suffer root loss. I guess the issue is if you go say 3 - 4 months+ that perhaps root loss really begins to take it's toll? Funnily enough I blasted as a Melocactus azureus with a hose when it was freezing cold in November to clean it's roots off and accidently damage it near the base by having the hose on a bit too high, I thought with that damage, that water, those temperatures I might have written it off, I knew cleaning it's roots was a bad idea like that in that temperature anyway but no, it defied my expectations and it's sat happy, no permanent damage, growing happily! I'm convinced then issues with Melos do mostly come down to whether they get those light waterings and possibly just ongoing temperature.

Certainly with a minimum of 15c and frequent watering though they seem happy as anything - in fact, I think because they were getting frequent water that's what's allowed them to start growing earlier in the season than a lot of other plants that effectively seem to need to bloat up on water for weeks before they're ready to start growing.

As I say I also gave Pilosocereus, Cipocereus, Arrojadoa the same treatment too and similarly they've had a longer growing season by starting earlier than the others, no sign of etiolation however the blue powdery wax on the Pilosocereus wasn't as strong from earlier in the season and you can see how it's become more blue on the later growth as the sun started to come out properly. I started watering them properly in about March and really they've been growing since then whilst some species (i.e. my Feros, E. grusonii, Pachycereus pringlei) are still fast asleep it looks like!