Hallo Leute, langjähriger Zuhörer, erster Anrufer hier, ich habe diesen Kaktus kürzlich vom Onkel meines Freundes bekommen und bis jetzt habe ich jeden Kaktus, den ich gewonnen habe, getötet (weil ich zu viel gegossen habe). Habt ihr einen Rat, wann man ihn gießt und wie man erkennt, wann man ihn umtopft? Und wie kann ich es umtopfen, wenn es soweit ist? Einfach den Topf zerschlagen oder so? :’) Wir freuen uns über alle Tipps, vielen Dank!!
Von: soviets-pectre
10 Comments
Cacti tend to have fairly simple needs:
-Extremely high amounts of sun. If its indoors, it will need a growlight for sure. No way around it.
-Very sandy loose soil. Highly organic water-retentive soil can rot the roots out.
-Water only when the entire pot is bone dry. They are far more drought tolerant than they are tolerant of watering too often.
Needs to be in front of a south or west facing window. Depending on where you live, you could bring it outdoors once temperatures are warm enough, but do so *gradually*. Don’t just stick it in the sun and leave it.
I like to bottom water my cacti every 14 days – soak the entire pot in water for about 20 minutes and then allow to drain fully in a sink.
Repotting is better to do in the spring when it’s actively growing. I would let it get used to its new home before doing this. When you do repot, get a pot 1” larger in diameter than what you have now. Use cacti soil, or soil and add lava rocks/perlite. I like topping the soil with a layer of lava rocks for aesthetic purposes.
Water it, let the soil dry out, wait a couple of weeks and water again
If you water as soon as the soil dries it’s almost always in wet soil. At first they’ll react like it’s rain season and grow a lot, but eventually they’ll start rotting. Always let them sit in dry soil for a while between waterings
Give it a cold shower
re: repotting – find a pair of thick, hardy gloves and focus on getting the new soil mixture right (it should be easy enough to find a cactus & succulents mixture). feel comfortable snipping off the roots that grow out of the bottom hole, and you should be able to wriggle-pull the cactus out of the pot. try to comb as much of the old soil out from the roots before setting into the new pot.
also – it might be practical to propagate that one outstanding arm.
like someone else said, wait for spring to do any of this
You’ve already gotten some great advice, but I gotta recommend the Beginners Basics guide over on r/succulents – it’s super informative and really easy to follow!
NSFW cacti
It’s just happy to see you.
If you’re gonna repot it… For cactus soil, I highly recommend bonsai jack gritty mix. You’ll want to wrap the cactus in towels & probably buy needle stick resistant gloves unless you want to break the pot.
You can also just break that arm off & repot it if you want.
Cactus store water in their stems. You only water them when it when it starts to look soft/squishy. There’s no schedule & they can go a long time between watering but then you have to soooooak them. Imagine they live somewhere very dry but when it does water, it pours.
I always used clay pots for them. Why? 1. They breathe more than other pots, thus reducing the chance of staying wet too long. Though humans can screw up any plant by over watering 2. I always broke the pot with a hammer and then grabbed the plant by the root ball when repotting. Versus grabbing the spines and well, OUCH + damaging the body of the plant.