Last year, we planted some Joshua tree and saguaro cacti. Today, we'll be showing you how they look today.
First off, we'll talk about the saguaro. If you are excited about bringing a desert exotic into your hard, I'll say that these cacti are extremely hard to grow. They usually germinate in the spring, and it's winter now. IF they germinate, one out of one thousand seeds end up as those giant, armed cacti you are thinking of. I cannot take the seeds out of my room because the temperatures are the perfect condition for them to grow inside.
After I planted the seeds for the first time, I looked up how to grow a saguaro cacti. This guy on YouTube said the kit it came with made the seeds mold, and he had to heat the seeds to 110ºF for them to grow. Finally they did sprout, but not after a few months. The TMAD can reach these temps, but not during the winter. So I just followed the instructions and planted them underneath the clear incubator the kit came with. The YouTuber lived in Arizona, along the cacti's native range.
Somehow I got some to germinate outside their native range following the kit's directions.
Here's three (out of fifty seeds) sprouts I noticed germinating this yesterday morning. Notice they are very small and some have a reddish tint to it. The seeds resemble dragonfruit seeds, and the sprouts also look like dragonfruits. Note that the fertilizer is not actually garden dirt; I suspect it is factory made soil, which looks similar to grinded up foam. It's a miracle that they are growing in such bad soil.
This morning, I noticed a fourth one peeking up. These cacti only grow to about one centimeter per month as babies, and less than that when it's an adult.
Let's see our Joshua tree. After I noticed one growing, I took it out of the pot it was growing in. Apparently, they don't like to be transplanted often as older plants, so it's best to transplant them as seeds. If I see a seed rooting in the pot, I take it out and put it in a glass of water. The roots continue to grow, until a green shoot appears. At that point it's eligible to be planted in a big pot.
These are the Joshua tree seeds that have germinated. The first one with the longer root was mentioned in another post; the one with a smaller root was freshly dug from the soil; the one without a root is one I am hoping to see sprout.
Stay tuned in the blog for more updates!
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