Cacti 101: a care guide & mini cacti collection tour!

little known fact this guy hurts way more to touch than this guy so much worse hey you guys welcome back so today i wanted to talk about some of my absolute favorite plants and that is my cactus so i have tons of different cacti just a whole assortment i see a cacti at the greenhouse that i like labeled cacti assorted and if it's cute like this kind of looks like my thumb i love it i had to have it for the most part these small cacti are pretty inexpensive they're all kind of funky and unique like look at this guy he just looks like a little beaver tail he's so cute and this guy really truly does look a lot like my thumb so we're gonna dive into the care for them i've had cacti for many many years and i'm going to teach you guys what i do to care for my cacti to make them look as best they can so first i want to start with the aesthetic of cacti i think that they provide such a cool look to a space so all terra cotta the green cacti just how like stoic they are they don't grow crazy fast i think that they make like that kind of cool arizona look to a space so i love a good jungle look and there is a time and a place for jungle which is like everywhere else but a cool arizona cactus moment i love it so let's just dive right into the care as most people know i live in canada in one of the northernmost cities in canada it is still pretty sunny but definitely not all year round the further you get away from the equator the shorter your days are in the winter there's a lot of days up here where if you work a nine to five and you go into the office at nine and come out at five you never get a chance to see the sun it's long gone by the time that you're driving home so not only are these tips for growing successful cacti but also successfully growing cacti up north so both in my old apartment as well as in this house i have lots of cell-facing windows it was a conscious choice it was it's the only way i'll move into a place you don't need south-facing windows for cacti to survive but it definitely helps having a south east west exposure always good for that direct sun they can handle direct sun so direct sun and plants you can actually train a plant to be okay in direct sun i know it i've done it i had snake plants in direct sun i had monstera deliciosa in south facing direct sun all day long you can train plants to love direct sun cacti just love direct sun you can also train plants into less sun but again you're going to have a less happy healthy plant personally i like to really let all these beautiful cacti thrive as best as possible so i try to put them as close to a south facing window as possible give them as much nice hot sun all day long or i supplement with a grow light and grow lights are way easier than you guys think you don't have to have these metal panels hanging from your ceiling being all gaudy you can have just a lamp like a cheap cute light fixture with a grow light bulb in it as long as it's pretty close like the grow light that i have is maybe only this far away from my cacti as long as they're pretty close they do a good job so tip number one as much light as you can offer them and of course as with anything play it by ear if you have it in lower light maybe you have like a bright north window and you have it in there you can just adjust other things like don't water it as often make sure that the mix is super well draining if you're you know a little heavy-handed with watering there are ways to make things work now for watering cacti so this is interesting my first cacti i killed by overwatering the second cacti i killed by underwatering you can underwater a cacti and they actually like a little more water than you think but they do not like to have their roots soggy so i like to pretend like i'm coming in like a desert rain sometimes i'm coming in really light and i'm just giving him just enough water to like make it and survive and he'll be okay with you know just absorbing what he can and then a couple times a year i come in like a desert monsoon and i water him thoroughly to the point where he is like soaking and wet out the bottom and let him dry out in the sun that way i feel like keeping him on his toes keeps his roots good and strong so this is kind of the approach i take with all my cacti i always try and think what these plants would actually experience where they're from so once or twice a year i give them the monsoon and with watering again it depends on where your plant is so south facing you're probably going to want to water a little more often because it's going to be really drying out in that hot sun if you have it further back from a window where there's less direct light you'll probably want to water less often it just won't deplete its water storage as quickly if it's not like constantly being beaded on by hot sun so that is about it with watering more than you think but definitely not too much if your soil is looking damp at all at all don't touch it let it dry out another tip specifically for us up north over the winter in those depleted daylight hours you are barely going to water i think truthfully i actually really gave most of my cacti a decent watering maybe twice all winter there is so little sun and everything is just using its energy to just stay alive what you really don't want to do in the winter while there's barely any sun is come in and really soak the soil and then have your cacti be trying to dry out within barely any sun so through the year more water in the summer way less in the winter especially if you're up north like i am now for a soil mix so we can actually see this one's pretty good to see because he's so slim so i make my own cactus soil mix it is mostly a good well-draining potting soil so you're not going to be looking for anything that's moisture retaining i also add a ton of coarse sand and a lot of this large perlite you can see and if i have some bark chips on hand i will add those as well basically what you're trying to create is something really really really well draining that will not sit with wet feet after you've watered especially after you've come in like a monsoon once or twice a year you do not want this soil down here sitting soggy so with cacti succulents that's really the only time i use sand in a potting mix personally but works like a charm coarse sand if you can really fine sand sits quite heavy like if you've ever been to a playground after it's rained that top layer of sand is quite heavy so that's not what we're looking for we're looking for that coarse sand that has tons of air gaps in it and again always a chunky mix the final care tip is fertilizer so i use a cactus specific fertilizer for the most part i'm doing a water in fertilizer and i only do it over the summers again our winters here are so bleak that i don't give anything any extra nutrients water any of that i just let them survive the winter and then i come in heavy with the juice for the spring so the water and fertilizer is really good but again you're not always watering your plants really deeply if you're adding water and fertilizer to something like this fertilizer doesn't take great in really dry soil so you're going to kind of want to be doing that fertilizing more so when you're doing your heavier handed waterings or cacti are actually an excellent opportunity to be using a mix in granule fertilizer that's basically the kind that you sprinkle on and it looks like maybe insect eggs or something or you can use it while you're doing your repotting you can mix in some of that fertilizer with that mix with your sand and your potting soil and all that and basically those are slow release they release as you water the plant so that works really really well especially for your cacti and succulents and final tip before i give you like a mini cactus tour is propagation so i have here a cactus that suffered some pretty bad root rot when i found it so he rotted off way at the bottom he was much taller than this how you propagate a cactus is actually like bizarrely easy you're gonna need a sharp knife and you're going to go straight through it and it'll look weird because you've literally cut the cactus in half and what you'll do is you let that piece of the cactus callus over for a night or two so that the bottom is no longer squishy but it's got like a scab to it and then you will put it into a little bit of your mix about yay deep and then you will water around the base of it gently but often this i propagated this way about a year ago and he's in a deep pot he has to be because he's not that small but this is a lot of mix you do not want this bottom wet so when i was watering him to help him propagate i was just hitting him around the base just to give him enough wetness to grow some roots and they actually root up pretty quick so a successful cactus propagation so something else that works the same if you have cactus where little pieces can fall off or break off little arms if you stick them in soil and again just keep them a little more hydrated than you normally would right around the base of it they will root too and grow new cacti so cacti propagation is actually super easy um i recommend it it's fun it's exciting so easy to propagate so i will give you a mini cactus tour starting with my dream cactus so i'll show you a photo there is a korean plant shop i believe it's in seoul and i follow their instagram and every few weeks they post these pictures of these cacti they get in with these little straw hats on and it's absolutely everything i've ever wanted in my life i need it so badly so every time i'm at a plant shop or a nursery i'm like checking out all of the cactus to be like okay a anybody cute and small is coming home with me that i like cause they're cheap they're usually like two to five dollars but if i find one of these big armed cacti i'm just oh i'm so excited so cue this big guy he is actually the type of cactus that can grow arms so i'm very hopeful that he will he's very stoic very pretty very upright and if you haven't noticed already i really like the look of terracotta pots i will probably eventually plant him in here he's reasonably new i do have a drainage hole if i take the sticker off but for now i just have him in the pot that he came in which is fine as long as you have a good mix and it's well draining this works i do really like plotting directly in terra cotta specifically for cacti but this works just fine just dries out a little bit faster so he is just like absolutely beautiful and i am in love next is one that i had kind of showed there so when i got this guy i fell for him because he was a lot like this he was just this bottom piece and he was so cute again like a little beaver tail so he had to come home with me and then as soon as i got him home he started to grow this like little pokey thing at the top here and i'm like oh my goodness is he gonna flower for me but no he just grew himself a little hat so that is how these little prickly pears grow they keep growing themselves like cute little funky hats such a cute little cactus i love them i've had them for quite a while i know cacti can be a little spooky to some but they're actually pretty easy to grow as soon as you get the hang of it so don't worry test yourself on a five dollar one then i had mentioned this guy this is one of my peruvian cacti i love him so much uh only because we brought him back from the brink of death he's a little crooked in his pot because he settled a little funny but he is pretty and he will be back to his former glory eventually then i showed these two funny little guys uh this one's just another little prickly pear like a smooth prickly pear i like those ones the really pokey ones sven seems to have a thing for just the cacti where he goes up and like wants to sniff at them so i worry about like really prickly ones especially because i keep a lot of these on the floor so this guy the guy who kind of looks a lot like my thumb i have no idea what he is i've asked reddit nobody seems to be able to provide me any information on him but he's cute i have this cute little guy who is just i believe a little baby golden barrel really cute really pokey not super expensive to buy but kind of a really good standard cactus and i've had this for years like when i got it he was pretty tiny they grow so slow so he's cute though i'll have to up pot him probably eventually but cute little golden barrel then i found this fun little guy again a lot of cacti i am not good at iodine cacti airoids are more my thing um or just your standard house plants cacti i love them all no idea who they are so this guy i saw last summer while i was on a trip to calgary and he was just too too weird to not get so he's like some kind of little trailing cacti i've kind of wrapped him back up in his pot he was trailing a lot more but i want him to be nice and full he's a cutie love him this little guy i also got on that same trip in calgary and i haven't repotted him yet but he's really cute again no idea what he is but cacti just have this like aesthetic to them that i love so he's really cute he looks really cute on the windowsill or on my desk love him another one that i could never tell you the name of but he is like the same blue color as like a cebu blue look at him he's glowing um no idea what it is but he's so funny and upright and blue so he came home with me a couple years ago and the final one that i have within headshot here i actually keep a lot of these cacti on my desk under some grow lights so they were all conveniently pretty close for a little mini tour but uh this is a bunny ears cactus forgive him for leaning i totally dropped him during the move and he fell out of his pot and like you can see like his one side is like leaning way over but he's really cute these are all the new little growths he's put out you can tell when you need to water this guy because he starts to flop like this and then it's pretty obvious uh of all my cacti this is the absolute worst one to accidentally touch if you rub up on this it looks so fuzzy and so nice he had space buns like a month ago but he's grown a third but looks so fuzzy and so nice but holy smokes if you brush up on this you will be picking out like a hundred mini prickly little pokies with tweezers for like hours the worst one to accidentally touch so i try to avoid touching him at all costs and that is kind of mostly my collection and my pointers for being successful with cacti i feel like so many stores sell cacti and kind of advertise them as like the beginner friendly plant and then beginners get them and then they accidentally murder them because it's a fine line between loving them to death and starving them of water thinking that they absolutely need no water once you get the hang of it they are really easy but it's all about getting the hang of it so don't worry if you're a new plant parent and you have killed a cactus or two start with the cheap ones and then you can eventually move your way up to the larger ones once you're feeling confident in your non-murdery skills and i guess i'll end this one here so if you guys have any questions relating to cacti succulents anything i'd even show you a succulent tour there's too many of them but if you guys have any questions with regards to them definitely let me know down below if you have a favorite cactus that i need to look up because i probably need to add it to my collection let me know that too i really really love cacti because they just look so cool and they require so little from me it's not like a task to remember to water my cacti if that makes sense compared to like some of my bigger plants like my birds of paradise and stuff so if you like videos like this feel free to subscribe to my channel down below i'm trying to put out at least one new video every week with the summer fast approaching and with how busy my job with landscape gets i'm hoping one week is still attainable but this will be my first summer doing youtube so i guess we'll find out together but thank you guys again so so much for watching and i will see you in the next one bye you guys [Music] you

Channel: Planterior Decorator

Views: 31,113

Keywords: cactus, cacti, planterior, planterior decorator, house plants, easy house plants, cacti care, cacti collection, cacti soil mix, cactus soil mix, DIY cactus soil, cactus root rot, cactus propagation

Id: wMGtuKbhcbU

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021