My First Cactus

My First Cactus 

G'day guys! 😍

Writing a blog is a new thing to me but the spark is there somewhere all along, waiting for me to do some sharing.

I'm Mizan, an Agronomist in a Malaysia plantation company that specialize in oil palm industry. Been in love with plants and animals ever since, but I put more focus on growing cactus and orchid as my hobby. With 6 years of experience on managing cash crops and oil palm, I would say that the more you know about plants, the more mysterious they get. Despite living in Tropics, I do grow some species of cactus from various background that might be common or rare depending on their availability.

Having said so, I would love to share with others about my experience in growing cactus and other succulent. Yes, my experience may bit limited to some local and imported cactus; but I am expecting a great information exchange with my blog readers so that we all could improve our knowledge. Other than basic cactus care, I will share about cactus grafting which may help some of us who struggle to grow cactus in wet or challenging climate.

Ultimately, I'm aiming for a platform to share about my way of growing cactus and their growth updates. Obviously, there are various kind of cactus, thus there would be a lot more ways to grow and graft them. It all get back to knowing and understanding how they behave, thus I will try my best to name them correctly. 

Basically, I will share my own pictures in the blog, but if otherwise; I will state their source.

What Is My First Cactus? 

Cereus hildmannianus

Guys, nothing could beat the tall and thorny Cereus hildmannianus in our wet and hot all year round tropical climate. And it was the earliest cactus I ever grown as a kid, maybe around 20 years ago. From my reading, they are originated from South America but undoubtedly they acclimatized very well here. Mom hates them so much due to their long sharp thorn (1-2 inch) that usually break when it impaled our skin. Now I have tons of them around my and in law houses. You will regularly see them on roadside pupping like crazy with bluish green new growth here.

Depends on your taste for cactus but I like them due to their sheer size, extremely fast growth rate, huge white flower and good performance as root stock. They can easily hit 4 to 5 meters tall here and get as thick as 20 cm not counting the thorns. In my experience, they can take a lot of abuse in term of watering and light; although they do hate low light. Bear in mind though, they could grow thinner rib when grown with low water supply; while the picture above show how thick their top part is when grown with lots of water and fertilizer.

Cereus are known to bear pink, round to oval fruit that taste sweet sour with white flesh. Although I have more than 20 Cereus plants, they do not make any fruit for me as they are very likely came from a same source of cutting somewhere down the history. Even though I got them from 3 different places, they don't cross. Plus, I don't really focus on Cereus breeding anyway.

Source: eattheweeds.com

Fun thing is there many confusing names on this cactus and people mixed it up but they are also called Cereus jamacaru and Cereus peruvianus. While at it, common grower just call them Cereus to ease discussion. I am a frequent visitor to Facebook group for cactus grafting namely "Grafting Cactus" and you will get to see significant number of grower use them for root stock but not as famous as Pereskiopsis, Myrtillocactus or Hylocereus.

Hopefully, my first share will give you guys some insight on this cactus. I will focus on grafting in another post, but for now I can proudly say that they work well for medium to large size scion graft. Below is some picture for a sneak peek.

Echinopsis chamaecereus (peanut cactus) grafted onto Cereus hildmannianus stock.

Thanks for reading guys, may the cactus be with you!

Adieu.