Blossfeldia Liliputiana

Went to Trader Joe's today to see if they had any more Mammillaria gracilis oruga (thank you again @sunlovin for that tip), and found a couple of these tiny living tesselations. Score!! 😍

😁👍💚

Aww man! I wanted those! Going to get them. Hope I get lucky too! Thanks!🌞

@sunlovin I had NO IDEA what they were until I got them home and used an app to ID them. Now I wish I'd bought all three that they had! I'm not too hopeful about being able to keep any of them alive, though. Apparently they're propagated by grafting or from seed, so idk if they're resistant to being rooted or what. 😬 I just hope they bloom and produce seeds before I kill them! 🤣

I did find another gracilis oruga. I cut the top off and pulled some babies off and dipped them in rooting powder to try to get it to grow on its own. Time will tell. And I love those Blossfeldias. I’ve been looking for them. 😁

@sunlovin a couple days after you told me they were there my mom went to Trader Joe's, so I asked her to look for one for me. She said there were 6, and she grabbed me the nicest one. I was in the area today, so I went to look myself. They had 1 (much smaller one) left, so I grabbed it. I'll disassemble one of them and try to root the pieces, and keep the other intact for now. I do alright for a while with the grafted moon cacti, so hopefully I can keep it alive for a bit. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I would too if I could, but every grafted cactus I’ve put in the ground never made it. So I have to try to ungraft them

@sunlovin I've never seen anyone plant a grafted one in the ground, so that doesn't really surprise me. I've tried to plant a grafted Euphorbia lactea crest, and it rotted IMMEDIATELY. Didn't even make it a week. And I had a rare Mammillaria grafted onto a Myrtillocactus geometrizans in a large pot outdoors that also only lasted a couple weeks. Come to think of it, my moon cacti did fine indoors for a couple years, but died pretty quickly after I moved them outside. Hmmm... 🤔

I find the smooth sided cacti are more rot prone and sensitive to problems. So that’s why I think those grafted ones never make it. For me a least. 🤔

@sunlovin you mean the rootstock cacti? They're usually Hylocereus, which is a huuuuuge climbing tropical cactus (it's what produces dragonfruit). I have one growing in a large pot, but it's never been happy. It wants sun, but the sun is too intense for it. It wants humidity as well. I never researched their preferred soil, but I suspect they prefer organic humus. Basically they're totally opposite of what's grafted onto them. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Yeah, it’s the Hylocereus. I’m not sure what it is with that, always rots. Even when I give it no water. Still rots or developed other problems that I’m not sure of. 🤔

@sunlovin I don't think it's anything you're doing wrong so much as it is the plant not knowing what to do with all the moisture and nutrients it's taking up. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It's absorbing enough stuff to sustain a huge plant, but instead it's only got an itty bitty little thing growing on it, which neither wants nor needs all that nutrition. I'm really not sure why it's such a popular rootstock, bc it's not a very good one in the long term.