What you can do when there's time

I have been off work for the past week and have put the time to good use in relation to my plants - been taking some photos and updating labels and other related stuff. It's interesting to look at how far some plants have come, or even just to realise that a plant is already several years old!

These are a few of the photos taken today of some plants sowed in 2008 (yesterday by now)

Leuchtenbergia principis


Notocactus leninghausii


Mammillaria schwarzii


Echinocereus rigidissimus


Thelocactus schwarzii


Acanthocalycium peitscherianum

Some pics of last year's seedlings

So I finally got around to taking and editing some photos - not the best but it's a start. These are from the seeds sown last May and July...

Gymnocalycium mesopotamicum


Eriosyce paucicostata


Echinocereus viridiflorus


Echinocereus subinermis


Echinocereus pectinatus


Soon I will have to prick these out because they are just too crowded. I guess it would be best to do this before the summer sets in...

Good growing so far

This year has been a good growing and germinating one for me so far. I've been sowing and sowig and the results are looking good. I even have run out of seeding pots so I'm not sure what I will do for the rest of the seeds that I have ordered and that I already have. I will have to find a creative solution.

The older seedlings are in growth and I have been working nearly every weekend to pot them up to larger trays so that they can continue to develop. Now I can feel the squeeze as I am running out of space. I need a new table to spread out more trays else I will have to hold back the plants that obviously want to achieve their potential.



Even the flowering is better than usual - perhaps because several seedlings have reached that stage of maturity - 3 to 4 years old and are now blooming for the first time. The Mamms mostly bloomed earlier in the year and now the Gymnos are coming into their own. Lots of buds and sevral blooms this weekend. The Copiapoa hypogea, the Gymnocactus gielsdorfianus, and the Turbinicarpus klinkerianus refuse to be left out, as they have been blooming regularly since January.

Mammillaria picta


Copiapoa hypogea


What I've been especially bad at is taking the photos and sharing them - even today when several Gymno flowers were opened, I thought about getting the camera... and then I forgot. But I had taken photos two days ago... all plants from the same seed pod but different shades of blooms

Gymnocalycium damsii v rotudulum