Giant Opuntia
This giant Opuntia gave my balcony a nice and rustic desert theme.
Tag: desert plants
My mom’s Euphorbia horrida hybrid
My mom found this beautiful Euphorbia horrida hybrid in a nursery a couple of years ago. She has a history of killing even the toughest plants (mostly underwatering), but her small cactus collection thrives. Possibly even more than my own succulents.
I found that overthinking everything about a plant’s needs isn’t necessarily a good thing. You don’t always need expensive pots and soil mixes, gadgets, fertilizers and calendars to keep a cactus alive. Just give it lots of light + very little water and it will be happy!
Astrophytum asterias cv. Super Kabuto, 32 weeks
It’s hard to see if they have grown at all since last month. But they’re both alive and well!
Notocactus ottonis, 1 month.
I managed to get a decent closeup of my chubby little Echinopsis baby (the oldest and biggest of 45-50 seedlings). Those spikes are already huge!
Monilaria moniliformis, 30 weeks.
Two of the bigger seedlings are dividing and spitting out 3 new sets of leaves instead of just one! That happened much earlier than I expected.
I managed to keep the temperature at around 5° C on my closed balcony during frosty nights by preventing draft and moving the greenhouse frame further away from the glass panels. Unless the temperature drops dramatically, they will be able to handle being outside all winter.
Luckily, the Danish winter is more wet than cold.
Monilaria moniliformis, 6 months.
As soon as I put the Monilaria seedlings “outside” on my closed balcony and let them experience the autumn temperatures (day: 10-12° C, night: 4-5° C), they started growing like nothing I’ve seen before. And they’re so thirsty!
I need to find a way to protect them next week, when the temperature falls below freezing at night.
Gibbaeum comptonii, 6 months.
The Gibs haven’t grown an awful lot since the last update, but I haven’t had a single casualty yet!
I water whenever they start to shrivel up and leave them in the brightest window to soak up some rays. So far so good.
Pseudolithos cubiformis, 25 weeks.
The biggest frog seedling is now 1 cm wide and tall. I’m currently watering once every second week or when they start to look particularly sad.
Lithops, 1 year + 2 months.
I keep telling myself that the’re just about to split and reveal their second set of leaves. It’s hard to spot, but the two Dorotheae seedlings (top right and bottom left) have split a tiny bit.
Pleiospilos nelii, 1 year + 2 months.
Still alive, guys! I kept them outside, right until they were hit by a heavy rain storm a week ago. They’re going to stack (have more than 2 leaf pairs at the same time), but on the bright side, all of the little wrinkles filled out nicely.
A dry winter should correct them, though.
Recent Comments