Rooting season is over!

So, out of 42 sprites planted, I got 21 rooted and another 18 on the way for next year. My lesson? don't attempt to root any sprite less than a year old. I fully expect a huge crop in two years.

Cactus takes patience, but only if you are in a hurry. I can wait two years.

20 sprites a year will still be turning out a significant amount of cactus flesh very quickly.

So, a few things for those who are interested in starting your own never ending garden.


The sprites have to depend upon the energy contained within that sprite until the thing is properly rooted. You can tell this by the restart of green spines on top. The thing is that they use a lot of energy and water in the process of rooting. I planted some that were too thin to begin with and most of them failed. If you want to do this, be sure to water the source stock heavily. What they say about rotting is true as you can see, some rotted, but you can also see some of my stock having large amounts of roots - these can be watered more frequently. Next year I will water the well rooted stock every other day until they are as fat, and almost ridgeless as I can get them. You can see some of those in the pictures now, the ones that look swelled up. I will then take more sprites, but only the fattest ones.

Now I was away for some of the most important weeks for these things and so relied upon my wife to water and she has no feel for it yet. I think I will put my sprites in very sandy soil so that I can water them more often but the pot will drain very quickly.

It is said that you shouldn't water unrooted sprites at all until they get some roots (roots, it seems, are triggered at least in part by being in the darkness). But I just don't believe that. I figure they must need some other sort of stimulation and so I watered them. You can see the resulting rot on some - I doubt they will make it.

I intend to let them go, presuming that the root structure will continue to grow throughout the winter (I have no idea), and repot them in more proper soil next spring. Notice that in general, the larger the pot, the larger the plant. Also notice that depth isn't much of a concern and a wide, shallow pot seems to work pretty well.

Now look at some of the larger, single column cactus. I figure, and I will test it next year, that I will top those, taking about 3 inches, and replant those tops. I should get a good root on the tops early on (each of the really big ones are tops from my plants last year, and you can see the bottoms have a number of sprites growing well on them. I figure that the ones I top should yield more sprites early in the year.

Anyway, the next decision is when to stop propagating and start harvesting. Don't know yet.

Oh, and you will see some pictures of some that were layed down in the soil rather than being stood upright. I thought I might get a larger root system that way, and perhaps a longer area for sprites to follow but as you can see all I have is one sprite, and another sitting on top of that one.

So I don't know which way is really best.


Sorry I didn't annotate each picture but it was too much of a pain.

Looks good canndo!! I need to get some cactus going,but can't find any to grow,and am to hardheaded/frugal to buy any(its a fucking plant for crying out loud!)
How was the vacation? Hope you and the ms. had a splendid time!

The little sprites on the last pic look sooo much like peyote..I wonder if the laws of nature would indicate the 'offspring' would have more 'repellant/deterrant'(mescaline) for their defense..

They do don't they. I doubt that the little ones would have any more activity. I know that these are rather potent as far as peruvian torch goes, and if you look for them, you will see pictures I posted last year, you can see that they do grow rapidly, as I said, about a foot a year each. Give them a bit of time and I should be getting 40 some odd feet per. Figure that's 20 good doses each year, almost enough for me and a friend every month.

So what are veg cycles if any? I may be getting some cactus soon and was wondering about preferred temps,light cycles ect..its cold here in the winter and don't wanna mess em up..but I do have a very nice grow facility if the enviornment condusive to cacti is the same or close to marijuana..also,soil? Sandy soil? Nutes?? Man I better start studying...

I put my cactus in the good ole California Valley soil...they are thriving....I dug a hole in the backyard and put some miracle grow down, then planted them.

my favorite kind are the Montrose like the one Canndo has in about the middle

Yea but do they tolerate 20degree winters and 100degree humid summers?

I'm just wondering if its possible to grow them where I live..

rory420420 said:

I'm just wondering if its possible to grow them where I live..

Click to expand...

Keep them close to your house, if it gets too cold, bring them into your garage, that is good enough. My temps get down to mid 30's and up to 120.

As long as they're protected from freezing they should do ok based on what I know. I'm pretty sure you could move them into your veg area for the winter but I'm not sure.

The one thing they don't like is gas leaks, propane, natural gas and the like. Other than that, Duck is correct. I am sure parts of Peru get mighty cold at night.