Cactus Blog

Harriet Love - New Pottery
Opening tonight, April 18, 4-6pm at the nursery.
Cactus Jungle Nursery and Garden
1509 4th Street, Berkeley

Please come and share our wine and cheese and crackers, ’cause if you don’t we’ll be very sad, and we’ll eat too much and drink too much, and then maybe we’ll have fun anyway. But really, you know, you should come.

It’s probably enough already about Home Depot, what with all the insults being thrown around here. So on to the Cactus. The Providence Journal has some article or other about Broadway star Mandy Patinkin and his Cactus Farm in Rhode Island, or something like that.

Well, I guess that wasn’t the topic of the article at all. I’m just a little distracted, what with this whole Home Depot theme I’ve attached to these posts all day long. What if they sue me? Will I take down these posts? Will I step up the insults? Will I start a new site called homedepotplantssuck.com? Only time will tell…

I think I mentioned earlier that today is Pick on Home Depot Day here at the Cactus Blog. I don’t know why. It’s not like I have anything particular to say about them. Well, I do, but it’s probably not printable in a family blog. (Which is why it’s good this is not a family blog.) But first, we have these lovely terrestrial bromeliad blooms making big news in the Liverpool Daily News, which I believe is in England.

Odd that they would say it’s in the cactus family, when of course it’s in the bromeliad family. I know the news will call any spikey plant a cactus, which one could see as a colloqiual reference, but actually using a botanical reference seems a bit too much of an error.

Anyway, we were talking about Home Depot. Here’s one thing they do wrong: they overwater the cactus so that you have to buy them within a day or two of them arriving or they’re already half dead. We get people at the nursery bringing in the cactus they bought at Home Depot, and they’re half-dead. So you know, you’re rescuing the plants you buy from Home Depot, so you better be ready for the extra work. And it’s just like buying a puppy from a mall pet store - you’re rescuing the poor thing, but then they just fill in behind with another poorly bred dog, thus encouraging bad practices down the line. You should find yourself a reputable breeder, whether you’re buying dogs or plants.

That whole paragraph really went off the rails. I find it entertaining when I write in a run-on sentence kind of way. I hope you do too.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviews a new book on succulents:

I haven’t read it, but I do know that nobody at Home Depot has read it either, because they’re illiterate there, and they wear funny clothes, and they don’t like healthy plants either. Yes, that’s right, they prefer sickly plants at Home Depot, because that way they know that I’m really just writing satirically and not even a little bit trying to libel them, even though they really do prefer ugly plants at Home Depot. And they eat cheetos too.

The Orange County Register recommends Agaves for your garden.

AGAVE ATTENUATA: The soft succulent is easy to propagate.

Photo: CHAS METIVIER, FOR THE REGISTER

Did I mention that you can get agaves at all your quality local nurseries? And places like Home Depot almost never have any good ones? Those guys are just sad. Now that’s a real specimen plant that you just won’t find at a place like Lowe’s either.

The Houston Chronicle recommends planting succulents and then go ahead, line it up on your railing, because its easy.

Yeah, whatever. Just keep buying those plants from your local independent garden center, or I’ll be very upset with you. Home Depot is the devil. There, I’ve said it. Now what are you going to do?

And don’t think I say this just because I own an independent garden center myself. Of course, I think of it more as a small local specialty nursery, but Home Depot has been the devil long before I ever started gardening. And they smell bad too.

A Geologist finds some interest in exploring not just old rocks, but the so-called “living stones” too, i.e. Lithops! Christie at the Cape has photos.

Q: Hi. I called your store last weekend and had some questions about a cereus cactus I have that appears to have scales but also seems to be “dying” from the top down. I was told to email some photos of my plant, so I’m sending them now. I would really appreciate your looking at them and advising me of what I can do to salvage my cactus. If you have any problems accessing the pictures, please let me know.

Thank you very, very much for your time and assistance.

Sincerely,

Jenny

A: Jenny,

It looks like your plant has both scale insects and an infection, viral or fungal (most likely brought on by the bugs…). You should spray with Neem Oil to kill the scale. You can then clean off the dead ones with a small paint brush dipped in rubbing Alcohol. For the infection, I hate to say it but you need to cut off the top a couple of inches below the “icky” part and then look at the cut part to make sure there is no black or orange spots in the soft tissue, if there are you need to clean the knife with alcohol and re-cut lower down until you only have clean green tissue showing. Then pour household Hydrogen-Peroxide over the cut to sterilize. Do this again for the next few days to make sure the infection is dead.

It will scar up and then branch around the cut and in a few years it won’t be that noticeable.

Good Luck,

Hap

Echinocereus armatus
I think my new camera this year is working out well. Thanks Mom and Dad.

In West Palm Beach, FL, WPTV News closely follows the story of a dove that nested in a cactus. This very important local story, oddly enough, did not make the national news channels. Not even Foxnews. So I am rescuing this story from the trashheap of news stories heaped up on that pile of, well, trashy stories, and printing it right here, right now, for you.

Good lord, who cares.

via atrios

It’s just disgusting.

Don’t scroll down if you don’t have to.

I’m warning you….

Yes, it’s a Venus Fly Trap Caught-in-Action!

It caught a slug. It’s eating a slug.

It’s fascinating. I can’t look away. My eyes are burning, oh the burn, it hurts.

Echinocereus armatus
You know, those crazy Echinocereuses are at it again. They are blooming very early this year. Last week we had that white flower spectacular. Today it’s purple day. Some would say pink, but I’m not quite sure. But I do know it’s 6″ across. Don’t they look like feathers that should be plucked and used on the end of an arrow? We do carry Arrow Bamboo, so you could cut a culm and create your own set of arrows. But then it turns out these are just petals, and not feathers, and so the arrow would not fly true and straight to its target, but would fall flat onto the ground.

Tomorrow, we’ll peek inside this wonderful flower.

Chrysler is paying for cactus on the streets of Detroit. That’s just a mystery to be solved.

Oh. Never mind.

More cactus news from England. This time the North Devon Gazette is giving you advance warning of a show coming up. I wonder if it’s the same show that was mentioned in the previous article. Probably not. I bet North Devon and Newbury are hundreds of miles away from each other. But then, I don’t really know, now do I? Fortunately, I have this tool I like to call the internet. So, here we are, google maps, and it turns out that North Devon is near Plymouth, while Newbury is near Reading, which of course means they are a couple hundred miles apart, and thus are probably not sharing a cactus show.

What was this entry supposed to be about? Oh yeah, the North Devon Garden Show.

There you go.

Newbury (England, UK) Today has the story of a man and his cacti; for today is the day that the local newpaper features the local residents and their local hobbies gone wild. Photos are included, so we residents across the pond can be sure of that we read is true.

The incredible collection of cacti and succulents amassed by Dylan Collins is one the biggest in the south. And part of it is going to be on show from this week as Mr Collins launches his new venture - a plant nursery called Down 2 Earth at Lower Henwick Farm off Turnpike Lane, Newbury….

Mr Collins, aged 39, has… inherited some from the collections of his mother and grandmother.

I see what they mean.

Domino Magazine’s Ivette Soler has learned the harsh lesson of the Agave life cycle.

(M)y prized variegated Agave attenuata - I bought it about eight or nine years ago at a cactus and succulent show…. I had a coronary - it was a $150 succulent in a one gallon pot….

And then came the freeze (last year)… I was so devastated I cut the melted leaves of ooze from the stem and stuck the pot somewhere in the dark recesses of the garden.

I stumbled upon that pot yesterday. Look at it. Pups. Plural. Meaning more than one. And gorgeous.

Now that’s what I call a variegated agave. And a happy ending. Maybe she should be selling some of those pups on ebay, or offer them to me, direct.

Rebutia narvaecense
Small whitish barrels with 1″ flowers in vibrant pink, as if I had to tell you. This is the first bloom this year, but you can see more buds there too. They will bloom into the summer, at which time the Rebutia muscula will then take over with its incredible orange blooms, as if I had to tell you.

The Green Valley News and Sun is happy that it’s finally April, so they can plant the cactus, and watch them bloom. In black and white.

Beaver Tail Prickly Pear bloom in mid-to-late April.

MARY KIDNOCKER PHOTO

Watch what happens in May after they’re done blooming - I’ll bet you they eat them in the Green Valley of Arizona.

Harriet Love - New Pottery

We’re having our first ever art exhibit. April 18 - May 31.
Opening night party is Friday April 18, 4-6pm at the nursery, and we’re very excited, so we hope you can come.