- Tue Jun 25, 2019 11:33 pm
#339140
I decided that I wanted to try my hand at growing some of the Echinocereus native to the Edward’s Plateau because they’ve got awesome flowers, nice looking stems, and can be grown outside all year here without worry (because I’m on the eastern edge of the plateau).
They grow relatively fast from seed and can bloom after only a few years, so I picked up some seed from Mesa Garden with location data: E. coccineus var. paucispinus from Kimble Co., E. coccineus var. roemeri from Llano Co., E. dasycanthus from Crockett Co., E. enneacanthus var. brevispinus from Kimble Co., E. reichenbachii from Kimble Co., and E. reichenbachii "castaneus" from Llano Co. You can probably tell that I focused on ones from relatively nearby: that’s on purpose because I’ve spent a lot of time in Kimble and Llano counties and their weather is quite similar to here. The only other close locality they had was Burnet Co. (which they misspelled Burnett...), but they only had one species from there IIRC. The Llano ones might not take our alkaline soil as well as the others because they probably are from granite, not limestone. But that’s years away to worry about.
I made a nice, well drained mix of peat, perlite, succulent soil from a local producer, and lots of lava sand. I filled up little pots and topped each with about 1/2 cm of lava sand to help suppress any weeds or mold or algae.
I put 12 seeds of each to start in different pots: I’m seeing if these conditions are good for them and don’t want to waste all my seeds. They are now bagged up under lights and on a heat mat, both of which are on an astronomical timer (so ~14 hours on right now). I’m going to keep track of their progress in here.
They grow relatively fast from seed and can bloom after only a few years, so I picked up some seed from Mesa Garden with location data: E. coccineus var. paucispinus from Kimble Co., E. coccineus var. roemeri from Llano Co., E. dasycanthus from Crockett Co., E. enneacanthus var. brevispinus from Kimble Co., E. reichenbachii from Kimble Co., and E. reichenbachii "castaneus" from Llano Co. You can probably tell that I focused on ones from relatively nearby: that’s on purpose because I’ve spent a lot of time in Kimble and Llano counties and their weather is quite similar to here. The only other close locality they had was Burnet Co. (which they misspelled Burnett...), but they only had one species from there IIRC. The Llano ones might not take our alkaline soil as well as the others because they probably are from granite, not limestone. But that’s years away to worry about.
I made a nice, well drained mix of peat, perlite, succulent soil from a local producer, and lots of lava sand. I filled up little pots and topped each with about 1/2 cm of lava sand to help suppress any weeds or mold or algae.
I put 12 seeds of each to start in different pots: I’m seeing if these conditions are good for them and don’t want to waste all my seeds. They are now bagged up under lights and on a heat mat, both of which are on an astronomical timer (so ~14 hours on right now). I’m going to keep track of their progress in here.