a kit for growing your own giant saguaro cactus
Is this a euphemism?
1: It can be, if you like. But I do have (what I think are) actual cactus seeds. Maybe she's starting a secret grow operation, though. Good catch.
You may need two. At night, when you close your eyes or look away, the saguaro go waltzing.
Oh! And an item left off my list: okay to grow up for awhile in Virginia? This is not their climate, I gather.
Fewer other saguaros to waltz with. The wrong music in the night air.
I see that you've checked Wikipedia, so you're aware that saguaros are huge. I wouldn't try growing one in a mug.
6, 7: It came with a really little pot.
Isn't it more about how long it takes them to get to that size? And many plants can be dwarfed. You could certainly start it out in a mug. Just be ware that eventually you might need, like, a hot tub full of dirt.
Maybe it could be like a bonsai saguaro.
I'd suggest using that pot, then. I wouldn't worry too much about the other stuff; cacti have evolved to survive in extremely harsh conditions. The main risk is probably over-watering.
13: May the acidic taste of this fruit remind you of our time together.
I honestly figured that it would grow slowly enough that it could live for a year or two in a mug with holes in the bottom. What's the problem, sanctofilo?
But how do you put holes in the bottom of a ceramic mug? If I didn't like my drill, I'd try and report back.
No problem; I just don't have a sense of how fast saguaros grow. All the ones I've seen have been like 20 feet tall. If the mug is about the size of the pot it came in it should be fine.
I have a five foot tall ficus that I got as a six inch stick when I went to college. I'd love to have it for another few decades.
I've seen various other types of cactus in little terracotta pots, which seem to do fine. I doubt drainage holes are even that necessary.
16: A standing question.
17: Oh. Word. Wikipedia suggested 70-some years before they even sprout an arm. So I figured I got time.
If there is an unglazed area on the bottom, you can use a masonry bit. If it's all glazed, I think you need a tile bit.
I recently learned that she was given the tree as a tiny seedling 35 years ago by a college boyfriend, and that she has nurtured that plant year-in, year-out ever since.
"And if you think you're going to love me / For a long, long time / Plant an apple tree."
I'm really not the best source for saguaro-related stuff. They don't grow in NM.
23: Because NM is short of souvenir coffee mugs.
23: I can send you some seeds. There's a metric shit ton of 'em.
How many saguaros are they expecting you to want to grow?
26: I figured they thought at least one might grow. Maybe.
I doubt drainage holes are even that necessary.
No no no. If the water can't drain, the roots will rot.
How many cacti do you think it would take to keep the cats out of the unpaved portion of your basement? And do you have an unusually well-lit basement?
Well, yeah, that's what happens when you shit on a cactus.
28: Cacti need very little water, though. What I'm thinking is that the small amount of water trickling down through the soil won't be enough to pool in the bottom of the mug even if there are no drain holes. I don't know if that's really the way it works, though. Stanley: what do the instructions say? Does the pot that came with the kit have drainage holes?
I'm inclined to defer to Megan in water-related matters of course.
Saguaros don't grow in California, though.
29, 30: Don't fill your basement with gro-lites, Stanley. The helicopters will come.
Listen to Megan. Cacti like drainage.
Yes, but he'll inevitably overwater, which will start filling the mug. The poor thing only has a chance if there's good drainage.
Even just a little water will pool terribly in a GLAZED pot with no holes. Poor cactus. The kit comes with suitable soil, yes?
You could break the mug and then Superglue it back together with a piece missing from the bottom.
Tile bit, smaller than you think. Go slow!
"Poor cactus"? He hasn't even planted the seeds yet. Let Stanley get started on something before you assume he's a failure.
Almost as though 43 is new to the internet. Don't you dare get in the way of our dudgeon!
Put some gravel in the bottom of the mug to create some air-space where water can pool if it needs to. Then put a layer of slightly smaller stones on top of that, and then put on your sand/dirt. Since its a cactus, and you won't be watering it much anyway, the lack of drain holes should not be a problem. I had a plant that lived for years under similar circumstances.
42: Which two of these has TJ heard on a date?
So many questions. The supplied pot is very small. It holds maybe two tablespoons of dirt (roughly, the supplied amount).
It is, based on looks, the standard orange ceramic clay pot.
The instructions indicate to place it in another, wider container with an inch of water in it. These are the only watering instructions.
Also: can I cook an egg on it? I must know soon.
What a terrible idea. First, cacti spoon, so they'll get stuck together. Second, you just need to get used to city driving and aggressively merge if you're stuck behind a cactus trying to turn left. NEXT QUESTION!
I'm still wondering why Brock didn't just wash the egg thoroughly, pop it in his mouth, and chew. Calcium-fortified!
Many types of cactus have edible fruit. I don't know if the saguaro is one of them, but I believe cactus wrens do nest in them, so you can probably find some eggs.
Someone once gave me a really great idea about just keeping track of who supports you or fails to support you in the comments.
Many types of cactus have edible fruit.
Prickly pears!
55 was my way of reciprocating.
53: That was my hobo consultant, who ripped off the idea from Megan. I blame hobos.
You should call your next band the Hobo Consultants.
You should call your next band the Hobo Consultants.
But don't stutter when you do so.
I too was going to suggest a bed of gravel in there somewhere, but I still think holes for the pot are a really good idea. I've always drowned my cacti, and I've tried really, really hard not to over-water them.
62: Kind of like that big guy in "Of Mice and Men," except with plants instead of small mammals and women willing to marry somebody named "Curley".
I overwatered the cactus of my teens, too. Poor thing. It held on from 1992 to 2000ish before I think it died of moving too often. It was so pretty, and budded several times in lovely ways.
Now I only have the bamboo Tonkelu sent me as a housewarming gift five years ago. It once was a tiny little twig, and now it is quite grand, despite oversunning, because all I have to do is make sure there's water in the damn bucket.
A guy I dated in college gave me a little azalea, and I cared for that well enough that it was a bit too big to fly home. I gave it to a boy I liked to take care of for me over the summer. He gave it to his grandmother. When we went to her house to retrieve it after the summer, she'd planted it and it was a mighty bush. Grandmas are so like that, you know? All capable and nurturing and shit. I said goodbye to it. It had chosen its new home.
I think it died of moving too often
That's kind of a relief. I'd hate to think that plants with sharp needles could move easily.
Forget about the mug pot and grow your cactus in one of these.
We've got a not-a-cactus -- something African that looks like a cactus but is unrelated. When we got it, it was three little stick things, maybe an inch wide and six inches tall. Now it's over five feet tall, has branched out all over the place, and LOOMS. I'm afraid of it.
I said goodbye to it. It had chosen its new home.
And then you rode the rails to Alaska in search of a paying job.
I just saw that movie last week!
My mental picture of LB's apartment just gets curiouser and curiouser.
Of course, I also saw it when it was called The Journey of Natty Gann, which I watched pretty constantly as a child. Tomboys! Wolves! Stoic fathers! Swoon.
It's pretty brilliant, how you start the movie all worried about the azalea, and about whether it's one of those manipulative Azalea Movies, but in the end, it's not at all like that, not at all.
I said goodbye to it. It had chosen its new home.
Great sorrow and regret overcame them on their separation.
It was their desire; it was circumstances.
The need one had to grow its branches
made it go far away—New York or Canada.
Their love, of course, was not the love they'd started with;
the attraction holding them by slow degrees had waned,
the attraction had waned to a great degree.
But that they should separate, that wasn't their desire.
It was circumstances.—Or perhaps Fortune
came on the scene as an artist, separating them now,
before their feeling could vanish, before Time could change them;
the one will seem eternally what it was to the other—
a twenty-four year old; a young, a flourishing azalea.
||
Damn. First school night of 2010 and I've already blown the "no tequila on a school night" rule.
|>
What can I say? I hear the word "tequila" and I come a-runnin'.
Happy New Year, AWB. I'm laid up with a terrible cold, so I hope yours is off to a better start.
Mine is just fine. Cold threatening, just in time to visit dear old mom. Bave and I were discussing a thing with the whole gang when I get back, if you're interested.
Of course. Enjoy (as best one can) your time with the fam.
We got a kit for growing a California Redwood, which, unlike a saguaro, we could plant in our backyard. Stanley, just in case you haven't been badgered enough about it, don't try to use the mug. It's too easy to drown a cactus, so why make it easier? Save the mug for coyote urine for the cat.
I wish I did not have California redwoods in my back yard. They make it really hard to grow anything under them. I wouldn't introduce them if they weren't already there.
(Someday, when I have money, I plan to take them out and have them milled for the lumber for my two story deck. Fucking redwoods.)
I wouldn't introduce them if they weren't already there.
I'm inclined not to, but by the time they got big enough to be a problem, they wouldn't be my problem.
That's what the person who planted six redwoods on five foot spacing in my backyard must have said. Fucker.
Well, they'll be a deck one day, but for now they keep me from having more fruit trees.
six redwoods on five foot spacing in my backyard
Okay, that's kind of hilarious. But vegetables and fruit trees are what we need, so redwoods are probably out unless we get some more land somewhere. Plus, a neighbor gave us a view of Mount St. Helens a few years back by taking out the Doug fir in his backyard, and I'd feel bad about obscuring the same for our neighbors to the south.
I wandered through the saguaro fields just last week, attended a party at the largest redwood grove in Southern California just three years ago, and am family-friends with the actress who played Natty Gann. I own this thread, and I'm not giving you any of the answers.
Moooom, k-sky's hogging all the answers!!!
I thought k-sky has never had more than one wife at a time. Is there really such a global shortage of wives that k-sky can be monogamous and yet still hog all the wives?
The first guy to ever get married -- that guy was hogging all the wives.
I don't think he was really married. God certainly wasn't the officiant, and who else could have done it?
Were they together long enough for it to be common-law marriage?
He lived to be 930, so yeah, probably long enough.
Two hour school delay for flurries. I suppose I should check the weather in the morning, but I looked out the window and it did not even occur to me to check. So I'm "working" with a pre-schooler in the office.
So I'm "working" with a pre-schooler in the office.
One child-entertainment idea proposed by a cow-orker the other day was to shred several sheets of paper three-quarters of the way down, such that the pages have dangly bits. Staple the partially shredded sheets together. Voila! It's a grass skirt!
Alternatively, let the kid answer the phone if it rings. What could go wrong?
97: We have a cross-cut shredder, so the grass skirt is a no go. I pitched him M & Ms while looking at animals on Wikipedia.
Stanley speaks to Stanley across the decades:
Alcorn, Stanley M. and Edwin B. Kurtz, Jr. _Some factors affecting the germination of seed of the saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea). Amer. Jour. Bot. 46(7): 526-529. 1959. --Germination of saguaro cactus seeds is stimulated by red light (approx. 6550 A) or daylight and far-red light (approx. 7350 A) counteracts this effect. About 0.1% germinate in continuous darkness. A single exposure to red light was most effective when the seeds were imbibed 24 hr., but maximum germination resulted from multiple exposures to red light during a 72-hr. imbibition period. The optimum temperature for germination was 25 ° C.; no germination occurred at 15 ° C and only slight germination at 35 ° C. Imbibition of light-treated seeds in 0.05 to 0.2% KNO3 increased germination. Germination of seeds in either light or dark was increased by imbibing the seeds in 500 to 1000 p.p.m. gibberellic acid.
imbibing the seeds in 500 to 1000 p.p.m. gibberellic acid.
He should mix the seeds with acid and then drink them?
MH: If you can spare the computer, I recommend YouTube. They have They Might Be Giants video podcasts, thanks to which my daughter now knows the difference between even and odd numbers.
We've got tickets to see They Might Be Giants. I knew they'd done songs for children, but I was taken aback to see that they are touring that way also.
100: well, there are seeds that only germinate after passing through a suitable digestive tract.