How to germinate

cacti seeds and their

aftercare
Author
J. S. Craig

Issue 03
August 1st 2022
Totally re-written and new photographs

Location
Yorkshire
Great Britain
Latitude 53 Deg. North
Longitude 3 deg. West
PREAMBLE

Growing cacti from seeds is a low cost and fun way to start out on the cacti
hobby or increase your collection. A certain air of mystery surrounds the actual
techniques but it’s surprisingly easy. There are notable exceptions to this, for
example Aztekium, Strombocactus, Blossfeldia and a few others that you are
unlikely to come across when you are new to the hobby. This method will
succeed with these more difficult types, but they are very slow growers.

The method that I’m detailing here works well for just about all of the ones
that you are likely to want to grow, including, but not limited to, Astrophytum,
Ariocarpus, Turbinicarpus, Trichocereus, Copiapoa, Lophophora and a great
many others.

Surprisingly, one of the easiest cactus families to grow and cultivate is rather
difficult from seeds. The genus is Opuntia, but it grows so easily from offsets
(clones) that very few bother to try from seeds.

In this article I intend to take your hand and walk you through the stages of
preparing for germination, actual germination and young plant aftercare.

You will only need the most basic toolkit and it’s probably in your possession
now.

A suitable container

A kitchen sifter

Tweezers

A zip lock bag or cling film

A teaspoon
THE CONTAINER

The container that you use is not really important. It

needs to be able to hold around 4 centimetres deep of
seed compost. For this article I’ll be using the container
shown. It’s the common one that mushrooms are sold
in. I’ll be sowing 200 Lophophora williamsii (Peyote)
seeds, you will probably be sowing less so chose a
container of suitable size. As an example, I sow 10 to
15 seeds in a 2” (5.5cms) plant pot. All kinds of take
away food containers are useful.
Make 3 or 4 small holes in the base, the reason will
become clear shortly.
THE SEED SOWING MIX
For seed sowing and germination, I only use one
standard mix. It consists of 2 basic ingredients, fine
particle molar clay granules and loam.
Molar clay granules

These make up 50% by volume of the potting mix. They

are light weight and extremely absorbent of water.
They allow the compost to be nicely moist and water
retentive without it feeling “wet.” It’s doubtful that
you will have these but they are readily available in
small quantities on-line.
If you can’t obtain any, don’t worry. Substitute
horticultural grit or crushed pumice, whatever you can
get hold of.
Please note that I don’t make any reference to perlite. I
hate the floaty, messy stuff with a vengeance! Other
growers swear by it, so if it’s all that you can obtain, go
ahead and use it.
Loam
This forms the other 50% by volume of the mix. Loam
in it’s truest sense is stacked, decayed turves. These
are virtually unobtainable nowadays so we must find
something to substitute. Get down to your local garden
centre and look for sieved topsoil, John Innes compost
or the like. You don’t want too much peat in it and the
nutrient level is unimportant for baby cacti. If
everything fails, go out with a trowel and bag and
collect a local molehill. Don’t even look at anything
that has been composted from domestic garden waste,
it contains glass, plastic and makes your hands black.
Remove any large stones, pieces of wood, lumps of
peat, etc.
Mix the equal volumes of molar clay and loam and you
have the base seed sowing mix.
Fill your chosen container to about 4 centimetres deep
with the mix and level it off with whatever you have to
hand.
Topping off mix
Add some spare mix to a kitchen sifter, give it a shake
and collect what passes through. You don’t need
much.
Add a couple of millimetres on to the surface of your
container, level it off and your container is done.
ADDING THE MOISTURE
Stand your container in tap water and it will start to
wet the mix.
Water will continue to enter and start to wet the
surface.
This is why we needed some holes in the base of the
container.
Leave the container standing in water until all of the
topping mix is wet. You may need to add more water if
the level is getting low.
Remove your container from the water and allow it to
drain for a few minutes.
STERILIZING THE MIX
Your mix will contain all kinds of life forms, some
beneficial, some not so. Examples can be weed seeds,
fungus, algae, mosses and various bacteria. We are
going to sterilize the entire mix. My method is to use a
microwave oven.
The tray that I’ve used needs 4 minutes on full power.
By comparison, a 5.5 cms. pot needs 30 seconds.
It needs to come out really hot so that everything has
been killed.
Ideally, leave your container in the microwave until it
has properly cooled down. Once you remove it, there is
an opportunity for organisms to recolonise your mix.
Have your seeds and cling film or sealable bag ready
for when your container exits the microwave.
SOWING THE SEEDS
Remove your cooled container from the microwave
and, working quickly, sow your seeds evenly over the
surface. Tweezers will be handy now in case seeds fall
too closely together. The surface will still be wet.
Using something to hand, gently press the seeds into
the surface of the topping mix. DO NOT COVER THE
SEEDS.
You will realise now that we are introducing a non-
sterile item, the seeds.
At this point I spray the surface of the potting mix and
the seeds with a 3% solution of Hydrogen Peroxide,
H2O2, as a precautionary measure. If you don’t have
any, don’t lose any sleep. Some growers regard it as
essential, I’m not so sure, but I have it so I use it.
Now get your container into a re-sealable bag or cover
it with cling film quickly.
I keep mine in a south facing conservatory with a clear
glass roof. It’s very bright and hot. I cover the sealed
container with a simple sheet of white paper to reduce
the risk of sun scorch.
GERMINATION
Germination is very temperature dependent. Start
looking for your seeds to pop around day five or six.
These are on day 20.
You can see the essential humidity in the sealed
container. If you need to add a little more water, use
boiled and cooled water and work quickly. It’s better if
you can avoid opening the bag or peeling back the cling
film.

I keep the seedlings in a glass roofed, south facing

conservatory which can be very hot. I just place a
simple sheet of white A4 paper over the bag to give
some shade. Inspect the seedlings through the bag
every few days to make sure that the surface of the
compost is not drying out. If it is, gently and quickly
add a bit of cooled, boiled water to the surface. This
will not normally be required.
These seedlings are now 9 weeks old and it’s time to
remove them from the bag and give them a bit of
attention. Some are on their sides and need a bit of
support. This tray is free of algae and moss, the
sterilisation has worked as it should.
The sterile conditions don’t always work perfectly as
you can see in this tray. I carefully remove the algae
with tweezers. It comes away easily, usually bringing
the sieved top layer of compost with it.
This is what I use for a top dressing. It has two
purposes. It will support any seedlings that need it and
it will suppress any moss or algae by making the
surface of the compost dark. I use a teaspoon to gently
sprinkle it around the seedlings and a pencil to stand
up any seedlings that need it.
Here are the babies, around 10 weeks old, with the top
dressing added. Any that were horizontal have been
corrected.
I now place them in a propagator. This is a double,
heated one so that I can keep them at a temperature
of 8C minimum through their first winter. This is not
essential but it allows me to maintain a high humidity.
The propagator rarely turns on in the conservatory.
Here is the same propagator with the lid fitted. All the
ventilation slots are closed to maintain the humidity
for maybe a year. As water evaporates from the
seedling trays, it condenses on the cooler lid and forms
droplets that run down the lid and into the base. The
result is that the trays can become dry, so you need to
keep an eye on the moisture level in the trays. I do this
by picking them up. The weight is a good indication of
the moisture level.

More to be added as time passes and there is

something to show.