3 January 2009
Early outdoor trial results
Posted by Stuart under: Cacti .
Blossfeldiana: destroying plants so that you don’t have to! This Opuntia decumbens went outside with the hardy opuntias this summer as it’s been sitting in the greenhouse for years refusing to grow.
As I considered it fundamentally expendable I thought it could stay out for the winter and take its chances. Well, after a period of low temperatures and hard frosts, as you can see, it’s not looking too healthy. One to keep in the greenhouse, I think.
However, the O. decumbens isn’t the only one to have suffered badly.
Another possible fatality is this wretched-looking Opuntia humifusa, or O. compressa if you prefer.
The local magpies appear to have taken a shine to these – presumably because they don’t have any troublesome spines and are a good source of succulent vegetable matter. This is the worst of them, but the others are similarly battered and bruised.
When I build my raised bed later this year, I’m going to have to make sure there’s a way of providing cover for more vulnerable plants, or I can see there being more damage of this kind in the future.
Echinocereus viereckii v. morricallii is looking promising as a candidate for outdoor life. With the rest of my echinocereus, it’s living in a cold frame. However, unlike the other smallish seedlings, it has been sitting under a leak in the cold frame’s roof. When there’s a thaw, it gets wet, then freezes again.
At the moment, it seems blissfully unconcerned, and has that lovely purple tinge that so many of that genus have in winter.