It was late August 2000 and I had just been to the Sunday morning Caboolture markets to visit the "Cactus Man" and his wife who are there every second weekend. It later turned out that they were Walter and Sheila Blässe. Anyhow, as I was still fairly new to the cactophilia disease I now have, I drove away with a pile of cacti in the boot of my car.

 

The first stage of cactophilia

One plant was Ferocactus glaucescens, which had finished flowering a few days earlier, and still had the remnants of the flowers attached. At home the plant was placed at the side of the house on one of the growing number of concrete pavers that were appearing there. About a month later I noticed that the flowers had now developed these green fruit like pods - woo-who! Two months later the pods were a decent size and starting to dry out. Well woe and behold a number of weeks after that, they were all brown and crispy and after removing them to keep the plant looking tidy, I found there were seeds in them there pods.

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Ferocactus glaucescens 'mother-plant'

After spending an hour or two removing the seeds from the pods, they were temporarily stored in an old fish paste jar. A week or so later when I had some spare time, I retrieved an old rectangular glazed bonsai pot that had been lying around (never could keep the dang things growing) and decided to see if I could make these seeds grow - it was worth a shot. A piece of fly screen mesh was placed in the bottom of the pot to cover the holes, some cutting sand poured in, and about 20-30 seeds sprinkled in and covered with a 1-2 mm layer of sand and a sprinkling of very fine gravel. The seeds were then watered from below. A sheet of glass was placed over the pot and put it on the table in my pergola. The pergola is covered with 60% shade cloth. I made sure the pot was also underneath the overhang of a staghorn fern on the wall.

Every day I went out and checked the pot and if the mix looked slightly dry it was lightly misted with water. Well, within a matter of about seven days or so, little green blobs began popping up all over the place - I had me some baby cacti.

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Now what do I do? For next few months I carefully watered the seedlings from below, and they continued to grow. When their tops reached the glass, I put some strips of 6mm pine under the corners of the glass, to allow better ventilation. I needed to keep the glass there, as the staghorn fern kept dropping its spores everywhere.

In early June 2001, I decided it was time to pot the largest three plants into individual pots-the rest stayed in their baby crib a little longer. The three plants were roughly globular and 1cm in diameter, with the remaining plants only about 5 mm diameter. I used Searles Cactus and Succulent Potting Mix for these younglings, topping off the mix with fine gravel for mulch. All the plants went into their new home, my newly finished cactus house along the back of my house. The sheet of glass was now left off.

The three then took off and grew! The others didn't stop, but were much slower, as they were still growing in sand. Every now and then, all were given liquid tomato fertilizer, as I had read that was suitable for cacti.

Christmas 2001 came along and it was repotting time again-this time for all of the seedlings. In the meantime I had joined the CSSQ and had learned a little about growing cacti and now knew that spring/summer was better than winter for repotting. I now had a pile of little Ferocactus, sixteen in all, in little pots. The larger three were now 20-25 mm diameter, while those in the bonsai pot were no larger than 10 mm. The larger ones had really strong root systems, filling their old pots, so it was definitely time to repot.

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October 2002 was the next milestone, as it was repotting time again. I now had so many other cacti due to my cactophilia condition, a second disease of becoming a cactoholic had also developed, that I had to start repotting in September in order to finish by March! (no, really, I am just slow at doing it). All were potted into the next pot size and re-measured.

All the smaller plants had caught up quite a lot during that year, and you would not know that they had earlier been kept back in grade one. They now ranged from 30-50 mm in diameter, with the larger ones now beginning to become a little squatter-the 50 mm diameter plants are 40 mm high.

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At their current size, they are starting to look more like the mature plant, with the ribs becoming more defined and vertical. The spines are also more flattened and solid, as in the mature plant. Every November I harvest about a dozen dry seed pods from the mature plant, which I use for swapping with others, etc. I still have some in bottles and more seeds were planted about a month ago. I have also bought some seeds recently and planted them out-so I will have to wait and see how many of these actually survive my seed raising efforts.