In August 2017, I sowed some cactus seeds. I used a Mr Fothergill ‘Flowers of the Desert’ mix and a compost mixed with sand and vermiculite.
Almost twenty months later, a few of the seedlings are a ready to pot on.
Exciting!
They grew inside a teeny glass display cabinet which I picked up at a local vintage market for a few pounds. It has proved to be an effective incubator, and a few of the seedlings have outgrown their nursery.
Today’s potting on kit: A sandy compost mix, with more vermiculite and some very cute tiny terracotta plant pots. (They were a gift from Rod and Alex, thanks guys!)
It’s a fiddly business, and I found a fork and teaspoon the best tools for the job.
These may be only tiny but they are certainly very prickly.
The job is done, and I now have three pots of teeny weeny cacti.
Lessons learned:
- Patience is a virtue.
There’s a lot of fun to be had in slow pursuits, and I think that propagating cactus from seed is worth the wait.
2. Mystery is intriguing
I still have no idea what to expect of this mixed bag of supposedly flowering cacti. For that reason I want to keep growing them to see what emerges, it’s like being on an exceptionally slow mystery tour.
3. It’s probably worth the wait
Perhaps in ten years time, some of these will have grown to 30cm tall, and they’ll bloom in the summer. Who knows if I can keep them going that long, but it will be fun to find out. Maybe I can look back to this blog post, and remember when I planted them, and consider just how much more wizened I’ve grown in the time they take to bloom.
As ever, I hope that your plans and plants are coming along nicely.
Jen x
Doing The Plan 
This is the first set of pictures I have seen of anyone growing cacti from seed. I see the packets in the hardware store, and wonder who grows them. There must be ‘someone’ out there who grows them, but I never heard of anyone doing so. It will be interesting two watch them mature.
LikeLike
Thanks Tony, it’s certainly a slow project, but that’s part of the appeal. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I sort of wanted to try it years ago, just because I had never worked with propagating cacti. I only deal with those that get big and must be removed or recycled.
LikeLike