Pots and inert in the cultivation of succulents: can we recycle them or is it better to throw everything away?

Autumn comes into full swing and with the arrival of cold days, succulents plants require less “attention” from us. In this period, at least in Northern Italy or in middle-north Europe, the plants must already be in their winter location, protected from bad weather and excessive cold. There is time for repotting, since it is better to wait until mid or late winter for this type of operation. Watering is obviously suspended and all we have to do is carry out some preventive treatments to protect the succulents from fungi and mold during the winter months. So, what better time than this to dedicate yourself to tidying up the pots, jars, soil and materials needed for the substrates? And this is where a far from banal question arises for many growers: pots and aggregates (inert) are expensive, is it really worth throwing them away and buying new ones or is it possible to recycle all this material? The answer, clearly, is yes: recycling is a must, but be careful, under certain conditions and making sure that everything we are going to reuse is perfectly clean and free of parasites, spores, mold, dust, etc.

The following article is dedicated to this theme, which goes into detail about the cleaning and sterilization of vases (plastic and terracotta) and the materials used for the substrates (pumice, lapillus, gravel, etc.) which have been set aside after the last repottings carried out in recent months. (…)

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Brief tutorial on planting cactus in natural light and heat: the various stages of the procedure

I usually sow between the end of March and the first week of April, always in natural light and heat. This year, given the unusually low minimum temperatures, I had to postpone it until mid-April. In these days I have taken advantage of the raising of the lows and the improvement of the days to sow some seeds that I obtained from my pollination last year and some recently purchased seeds. I sowed cacti exclusively: Copiapoa, Gymnocalycium, Pyrrhocactus, Astrophytum, Lobivia, Escobaria, Frailea, Leuchtenbergia, Ferocactus, Thelocactus and more. The seeds had been cleaned immediately after harvesting and stored properly. I have written several articles on sowing: you can find everything in this section of the site: sowing.

In this article I thought of creating a sort of sowing “tutorial”, photographically documenting all the various steps involved in my method. It’s good to specify it: it’s simply my method and I’ve been following it for years now, but it doesn’t mean that it can be good for everyone or that it can be comfortable for everyone (…).

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