Print

[Frog Pajamas]

Last year I brought my cacti indoors and cut off water all in one fail swoop. It was probably too warm indoors for them to achieve full dormancy, and while everything did fine, I'd like to do dormancy better this year.

So, when do you start slowing down watering your cacti, and how long does it take you to get them from growing season conditions to dormancy?

It will get too cold here to leave them outdoors all winter, but I was thinking maybe I should leave them outside until we're getting night temps in the high 40's F so they have more normal dormancy conditions before they come inside and sit in windowsills. Does that sound reasonable?

Advice and insights would be much appreciated.

2 Likes TBM and EIRN like this.

[Ian Morris]

Here is what I do:

1) Wait until the first freeze to bring them inside (our area this usually ends up around Halloween or early Nov.) and I know they can tolerate more but the fall sun is really weak at this point anyway so there are diminishing returns for stretching (etoliation pun) this time out.

2) Put a layer or two of cardboard on the concrete slab of the garage.  My garage is windowless but I suppose the best locations are nearly always dark and out of high traffic areas, I have a workbench I pull out to make room for the cacti.

3) Arrange my cacti on the cardboard.

4) Invariably I have to 'dust' the cacti because spiders seem to love hanging around them.

5) Start conditioning them to outside in early Spring (for me its the garden project scheduled right after tilling so sometime in mid march) 

Hope this helps,
Ian

1 Like EIRN likes this.

[New Wisdom]

What I do is start slowing down watering in the later half of July and first half of august. Then I do my last watering in august (depending on the plant size and species some of them get watered again once or twice.) I leave them outside to dehydrate until October or so and bring them in before the first freeze.  As the temps cool off and the lighting changes they seem to go into dormancy by themselves. Most of my plants stop growing all together, but there are usually a few that still try to keep growing after I bring them in.  They get all etiolated and ugly unfortunately, but they usually stop by december.  Once inside I do not water them all winter.  So far I've done good with this method. I have had a few casualties though.

1 Like EIRN likes this.

[Frog Pajamas]

Thanks guys!

Wis, do you keep yours in the dark too?

[New Wisdom]

I do not. I just let them chill inside.  I have too many to keep them all in the dark anyways. Lol.  I'd have to block off all my windows in the house to keep them all in the dark. Once they've gone dormant with my method they stop growing till spring. The cooling weather and lack of water while they are still outside makes them shut off growth and most of them dont even try after coming inside.

Then even without starting to water they they will start growing come springtime and then I start watering.  Some of the stragglers I will water before they start growing and then they start pumping.

1 Like Frog Pajamas likes this.