I use a lot of terracotta pots, particularly for any pots 6" or more in diameter (but I also use grit sand - see the drainage post where one member trashes this material - so maybe I'm not a serious grower). I've never worried about the root matting that you can get between the soil and the pot...

No hard or fast rule here, but if it were my pot I would have repotted those in the last month, whilst still dormant. I can see at least 14 plants and two or three different vigours. If you don't repot now at least one of two things will happen, the big plants will swamp the small ones and/or the ro...

A couple of months on, is anyone having good results with this year's seed? I've got fewer than a dozen seedlings out of 20+ packets. The other suppliers packs are showing much better results. This is not a dig at the people who give their time to sort, pack and send out the seed, but it might be a ...

I recommend you buy a good quality electric heater. The hysteresis on the thermostat is important for costs and a heater designed for use in a wet environment could just save your life. Don't stint is my advice. For insulation. Take a look at twin wall polycarbonate. For years I used bubble insulati...

Is anyone having better results than me? I panted 26 packs of BCSS seed on Jan 7th and 18 packs from another supplier. I have a propagator running at 20c fitted with a grow light on a time switch. Of the BCSS seeds, only 7/26 pots are showing any germination, mostly just one seed, whereas the the ot...

It was my contamination on the non cactus seedlings. Two neighbouring pots have shown the same weedlings so I must have dislodged something when putting the tray of pots in to the propagator. Astros and Wilcoxias ex Piltz looking good. Lithops ex BCSS coming through. Epiphylum hybrids from a fella o...

Has anyone else got some rather unexpected seedlings out of the Rebutia cajasensis? Mine are certainly not cacti! They look more like annual lobelia seedlings, but it is too early yet to judge. It could be contamination at my end, perhaps, but it's only one pot out of ca 40 sown on Saturday. No othe...