Ziggy's Cactus Blog

Opuntia humifusa. This is one of the species that has lived outside here in Kent, on top of the North Downs, for 4 years now. It has been covered in snow a few times and although it's not so vigorous as the ones grown undercover it certainly is doing ok. It even flowered twice this year. It's wet because it's just had it's first frost of the year.

We've had our first few days of hard frost. The shop polytunnel was down to 1c and there was ice in the smaller tunnel. The Cactus House stayed about 6c though so the upgraded insulation is working. Despite the cold, the Devil's Backbone plant thinks it's Spring and is putting out some flower buds.

Pruning Mammillaria seedlings. I should have an article about this coming out in next month's CactusWorld Magazine, although I've not had confirmation yet.

The Holy Opuntia of Womenswold 😁 This was a rescue from last year. It's slowly picking up despite the slugs.

The Devil's Tongue Opuntia has started to go into it's winter sleep. It might look tired at the moment but it'll dehydrate a lot more before the middle of winter. In previous years it's gone so far to sleep that someone said what a lovely trailing cactus it was 😁

All I needed was the flowers to open so I can make an intro to this years cactus flower summary video. The sun hardly came out today so they all stayed firmly shut 🙄 I could launch straight into the video but it would be nice to have a short intro so I'll try again tomorrow.

I noticed my Puya chilensis(The Sheep Eater) has started to put on growth after not doing anything all summer. I'm guessing it still thinks it's in Chile and that it's coming into Spring? In habitat they can entangle animals in their serrated leaves and have got the reputation of feeding on the corpses 😬

Further to yesterday's post, I took a picture today of the Opuntia smithwick. You can see the etiolation on the new growth. Towards the end of the summer it started to sort itself out but the light earlier in the year was awful. The plant had been on the South side of the Cactus house so it should have had enough sunlight.

Opuntia "Smithwick" seems to be a natural hybrid found near Smithwick, Dakota. Either a cross between O. polyacantha and O. fragilis or O. cymochila and fragilis. Grows to 4 - 6 feet. Cold hardy. The growth last year looks like T. geometricus but this year it's grown quite etiolated due to the lack of sunlight all summer.

This is one of the most dangerous cacti we sell. Cylindropuntia rosea 😬 We only keep a few of them in stock as they have sheathed spines and sometimes need removing with pliers if they get you. Even the Salty Monk wouldn't touch one as you'd never get the spines out of his wooly habit.

I was turning the previous year's compost heap yesterday when I found these Opuntias. They must have been thrown out after the hard frost of 2022 but have survived in the compost while everything else has rotted around them. The only other plant I found alive was a potato !

This is the only Tephrocactus alexanderi plant that I have at the moment. I had a rooted cutting earlier in the year but when I checked it it had died. It's very slow growing so I'll have to see how it grows next year before taking any more cuttings. Hopefully it might respond to the new LED lighting I've put above the small Opuntia bed.

I have a customer due to visit soon to pick up a Tephrocactus soon so I had a look at the others that we have for sale at the moment. I have another cutting that I took from an unlabelled plant that may or may not be a Tephrocactus geometricus. I can't sell it as such until I know for sure and the only way to know for sure is to wait for it to flower.

Thought I had harvested all the cactus seed this year but noticed some pods on this Rebutia miniscula while I was tidying up the bench. It's got rather large and showy flowers compared to the other Rebutias.