It’s nice to see someone else who has had the sense to get a magnifying glass and identify their pests ! I’ve been banging on for years about how ‘red spider’ is flat mite and not two spotted (which is also called red spider because it spins webs, which flat mites don’t). One handy tip for spotting ...

They are pernicious little things and quite hard to get rid of so be vigilant. They are very slow to reproduce compared with two spotted mites so can take a long time to reappear in large enough numbers to be detectable. Insecticide based on rape seed oil works too if you repeat spray. I frequently ...

There is Hypertufa -made out of cement, sand and peat. Of course you'd might have to swap the peat for something similar. I remember making containers out of this years ago- over time the cement component settles down and does not leach too much. I’ve got a couple of home made troughs made from hyp...

Paul in Essex wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 3:34 pm It's been a while since I looked for any but last time it was all but impossible to get tufa anywhere and, secondhand, it was staggeringly expensive.

It doesn’t surprise me, last time I bought a large chunk of tufa to make a tufa garden was around 1980 from Ingwersens nursery…

Tufa is good for growing plants in directly as it allows water to percolate through. It’s used a lot in alpine gardening. There are some nice examples at Kew. If you can find some it would be worth experimenting with Tufa is very soft and alkaline though - not sure some of my plants would like that...

Tufa is good for growing plants in directly as it allows water to percolate through. It’s used a lot in alpine gardening. There are some nice examples at Kew. If you can find some it would be worth experimenting with

A few more things flowering now, plus lots of buds coming IMG_4488.jpeg Mammillaria senilis doing its normal annoying thing of flowering on the sunny side only IMG_4490.jpeg No idea what the correct name is for this now but the seed packet said Neoporteria senilis IMG_4487.jpeg Turbinicarpus valdezi...

ralphrmartin wrote: ↑Wed Mar 27, 2024 2:56 pm

Ali Baba wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 2:36 pm The first Rebutia every year for me is this one , which came from Ralph originally, always way ahead of my various marsoneri clones. Can’t check the name at the moment though…

R. violaciflora v. knuthiana - it's one of the ones I mentioned above.

That’s it! Thanks

Looks like a Scots pine cone to me
Check the date

That Euphorbia xantii is very odd in a nice way.
The first Rebutia every year for me is this one , which came from Ralph originally, always way ahead of my various marsoneri clones. Can’t check the name at the moment though…