Share The Seeds
Gardening Area => Growing questions and answers => Topic started by: Radium on June 20, 2015, 06:21:51 PM
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I have this headless cacti, which has very good developed roots, and recently popped a new head (what's the correct name for this little baby heads that pop from the fresh of a mother plant?)
The baby head is growing very fast, but I would appreciate a few more heads, at least two more.
Questions:
- What can be done to make the cacti pop more heads?
- Does the growing power divide between heads? I mean if for example 2 new heads pop, will the current head lose 2/3 of it's growth rate and share it to other heads?
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I am curious about this too, the term is Pupping.
All of my well established cacti have sprouted 2-3 pups each. Most along the base. These cacti are typically about 2' tall and pup at the base near the soil. I was curious why... Its been great weather wise... we get occasional monsoons with like 2-7" in a couple of hours, then 88-95*F temp daily was wondering if that had an effect.
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Try and check this thread from nexus it might answer some of your questions.
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=43032
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Ive also heard that watering with coconut water will encourage pupping, but have niried it personally. I think multiple growth points would mean slower growth per pup, since the energy is divided.
Are your cacti up on the roof?
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The cacti is located at the tip of the balcony, it receives around 4 hours of sun daily.
Here's a picture of the plant and her lovely pupping.
The pic is around a week old, the lil' girl has become a lot bigger now!
How about doing damage to the cacti? although even if it works, I might not consider doing it, because I will feel like a tyrant slave-holder then.
Regarding the energy required for growth:
Sometimes a lot of energy is available in a project, but fewer than needed manpower makes it to go slow.
Imagine you're building a house.
You've bought all of the materials, but you only got 1 builder, obviously the more builders you have here, the sooner your house will be ready.
The "builder" in that analogy is comparable to the "growing tip cells" of the pupping.
They can only divide at a fixed rate, no matter if there's so much excess energy/nutrients available, cell replication is so complex and takes some time.
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Miracle-gro is good for inducing pupping in trichs. Dunno what's in it that does that but old time trich growers have used it for years, used at half-strength.
Osmocote for growth and Miracle-gro for pupping was the standard treatment. At least for those who weren't too fussy about being 'organic'.
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Miracle-gro is good for inducing pupping in trichs. Dunno what's in it that does that but old time trich growers have used it for years, used at half-strength.
Osmocote for growth and Miracle-gro for pupping was the standard treatment. At least for those who weren't too fussy about being 'organic'.
I have been using miracle-gro cactus soil and fox farm... who woulda thought. I come from a group of "growers" who hate on miracle gro for other plants LOL
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Benzylaminopurine (6-BAP)
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Have you tried it Hcc? I already posted a link to a thread that shows i guy using it, but not really sure about the results?
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I tried it once but it didn't work for me.
I think New Wisdom and a few others have had success though.
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I wouldn't try to force pupping to be honest, but you can use what HCC said. BAP works great as long as the plant has the energy to do so. Although it's not on the plants terms so you can overstress a plant by forcing pups. I used to make cream out of anhydrous lanolin and BAP to force pupping. I've realized it's best to just let the plant pup on it's own when it has the resources to do so.
If I were you I'd just give it some sun and nutrients and let it do it's thing.
New Wisdom
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By the way, how I would apply it was to take a sterile scalpel blade, cut a very very shallow cut just to get through the skin, then cover that cut with the BAP cream. And a pup would usually emerge between 1-120 days after application. You do not have to cut the skin, but I had better results this way.
Also, I believe the concentration was 1.5-3% BAP in the lanolin. I don't remember exactly though.
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Just to clarify a bit, Miracle grow induces basal pupping, which is how most trichs prefer to grow anyway. With BAP you can force it to pup at any areole you want it to.
And I'll second the remarks about forcing pups. The plant needs sufficient root structure to support the new growth. Better to have one or two big pups than multiple small ones that can't grow because they are trying to suck more resources than the rest of the plant can supply.
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Hmm, too bad, here we only have this obscure Indian powder product labelled "Root growth hormone", and no indication of the ingredients.
And lanolin is not available here.
Can I use vaseline or veggy oil instead?
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I bet you'd get more pups if you could just increase the amount of direct sun per day. Maybe put them up on the rooftop garden while you're still in your current apartment?
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I bet you'd get more pups if you could just increase the amount of direct sun per day. Maybe put them up on the rooftop garden while you're still in your current apartment?
I'm afraid to lose the pub to the naughty crows if I place them on rooftop.
I will be moving out of here (or precisely speaking, thrown out from my own legally owned place by gov), and will get a new place with a sunny balcony.
My current balcony doesn't get much sun.
I hope to get a better one.
I visited an apartment which had 12 cubic meters of sunny personal backyard, but the indoors was like hell, and we couldn't tolerate living there (only 2 cubic meters for kitchen, 1 cubic meter for toilet, and 2.5 meters room height)
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Hmm, too bad, here we only have this obscure Indian powder product labelled "Root growth hormone", and no indication of the ingredients.
And lanolin is not available here.
Can I use vaseline or veggy oil instead?
A water based lubricant would work better than Vaseline or oil. KY Jelly or something like that.
nobody
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BAP works, but can cause too much growth. I have a cactus that was treated with BAP on a single areole. A pup was produced from the point, however this pup then proceeded to produce six or seven pups of its own before it was even an inch in length. It looked kinda cool, but the entire growth has stalled and not grown any bigger.
lanolin is often used because the BAP will not dissolve in water, but will dissolve in fats/oils. I think lanolin is preferred because of its viscosity, is not petroleum based, and its stability before breaking down. A similar compound can be created using beeswax and olive oil (some ratio info HERE (http://www.humblebeeandme.com/a-quick-guide-to-beeswax-liquid-oil-ratios/))
Both BAP and lanolin can be purchased online. I doubt BAP is available at local stores.
Coconut milk is another option that is fairly popular anecdotally, but I don't know if its effectiveness has been proven, and I have not tried it myself. Basically water down a can of coconut milk at least 50:50 with water, and feed it to your cactus during regular watering. I don't think multiple applications are necessary.
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Yeah lanolin is non-polar, and thus needs to be substituted with a non-polar, like wax, vaseline, paraffin, oil etc.
What's wrong with petroleum-based stuff?
I have two questions:
- What is coconut milk? the natural liquid found inside the coconut?
- My only pupping is growing RAPIDLY! it's now almost 3 inches long.
Is it a good idea to cut it from the mother plant, and try to root it at this time? to let new puppings grow on the mother plant?
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Coconut water is the liquid in a coconut when you harvest it. Coconut milk is a thick white liquid made from the moist white pulp in the coconut and has a higher concentration of nutrients, electrolytes, n' whatnot than coconut water.
With regards to your pup, I would highly recommend that you do not remove it from the mother plant. The rapid growth signifies that the cactus is diverting nutrients from the cutting to help grow the pup (a pup on my bridgesii appeared two months ago and is now ~6-7 inches high and still growing strong). The nutrient-rich stock is propelling your pup to new heights far faster than it would ever have a hope of reaching if it's mama wasn't so nurturing and separating the two would be a grave error IMO.
I could say many many many many things about why petroleum products are terrible to use around plants, the main one being that many are toxic to plants and may kill them if ingested. To encourage more pupping, I would suggest increasing access to water, increasing sun exposure, and fertilizing the soil with Miracle Grow and a coconut milk dilution as mentioned before sound like good ways to help encourage further pupping.
However, I wouldn't try to get as many pups to sprout as possible as soon as possible as rash and impatient actions and intentions tend to be the leading cause of premature plant death. I'd suggest you tend to the cactus as you have before, watering occasionally, to help support the growth of the pup that has already emerged. I would rather have one pup shooting up like a Saturn V rocket than have a dozen pups sprinkled around the cutting growing as slow as lophs do.
Hope these tidbits of advice help,
-Sherdan1
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Yeah, if you were to try to cut that off it would mostly likely die before it rooted because of how small it is. You want a pup to be at least 6" tall (prefferably 12") before attempting to root. Otherwise it'll take a VERY long time to root and grow extremely slow, or it will just die because it didn't have the energy to make a root system.
My advice, just let it do it's thing. Give it some more light and nutrients and it'll most likely pup again.
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I will have a balcony with full direct sun in 2 weeks.
So the spiny fellas will love it.
But generally, is it a good idea to cut puppings (+12 inches) and plant them in soil?
Because I want to increase the number of my total independent plants ASAP.
And this rooted headless mother looks like a suitable baby maker.
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Yes, removing and rooting pups is a good way to propagate, however since your mother is a stump you will eventually exhaust its ability to produce pups since it is limited in the amount of light it can photosynthesize and it will eventually run out of areoles to produce pups from.
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Piss
Seriously, low sodium organic hippie pee diluted to 1/10th strength [ok, it doesnt have to be organic or hippie, you could milk a stoner for pee or something, but it should be low sodium]
Works as good as miracle grow for inducing basal pupping in trichs, IME.
Particularly on bridgesii.
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kykeion,
Cacti can pup more than once from the same areole. Even after you cut it off. I've had cacti pup 3 or 4 times fromt he same areole even though I keep cutting them off. Granted they were globulars and not columnars. Idk if it's the same with both, but I assume it is. They can pup from spots that don't even have areoles as well, like the core. So you don't really have to worry that much about exhausting it's ability to pup, but after a while it will get woody and not photosynthesize as well.
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One more thing to add, the established root system is just as important as the mature stock. So even if it's not photosynthesizing well the established root system will give it a huge boost. I've seen ugly woody stocks that were only 4" tall, but had huge root systems throw pups that hit 12" in 6 months.
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Okay I poured some pisss on its soil, plus a splash on its skin.
Now I will wait and watch.
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Cacti can pup more than once from the same areole.
They can pup from spots that don't even have areoles as well, like the core.
Good to know.
I know they can also pup in the root/stem transition area as well, and least in seed grown plants since this area is going to have areoles in a cutting.