Mammillaria

My Mammillaria cacti have been slowly starting to bloom. Probably would have helped if I'd fertilized. Oops! Dropped that ball. 😅

Cactus flowers are a favorite of mine. There texture is like crisp smooth lettuce and come in many colors and shapes. I really love your collection and appreciate your knowledge of them. This is a very beautiful picture with a lot of detail. Bravo 👏 I think that’s why a lot of my succulents are flowering, I recently gave them all a feeding.

Aw, @docthrill thank you for the extremely kind words! ☺️ You're right, there IS something special about cactus flowers. Mostly I'm impressed by how such an unfriendly and glacially slow growing plant can put out such a delicate and pretty thing so quickly! I don't grow them for the flowers, but they're definitely a bonus. 😁 I'm always in awe of your collection as well. Succulents and tropicals thrive for you in ways that I'll never achieve, although you do inspire me to try! ✊🤩

Thank you for your kind words. If it were not for the greenhouse I couldn’t grow a lot of plants we have. Research too was my saving grace, I was terrible my first 6 months of gardening until I did those two things

@docthrill I hear you! Unfortunately a greenhouse isn't in the cards for me, at least for the foreseeable future. I research everything as best I can, but I do always have issues with most commonly accepted "norms" (average humidity/temperature/growing seasons/etc) not being applicable in my area. Always a learning curve! 😅

Looks great. I’m behind on GT bc it would let me see posts from people I follow for 2-3 days for some reason. Arg...🙃

Strange! I feel like sometimes I'm missing some pics in my feed, bc ppl I'm following have pics that were posted recently that I've never seen or ❤️'d. I know they don't always notify me of comments, so sometimes I miss some. @philstalder

Same here. Weird 🤨

Close-up of some of my blooming #mammillaria last spring!

Fantastic photo

That’s perfect 😍

Thanks, @philstalder and @txgardener ! ✌️😁

Gorgeous 😍

@sherrisgarden Thank you! ☺️

I found one yesterday. 😁 I’ll post it when it’s planted. It was labeled as rhodantha. I looked it up. It’s correct. There are several colors. 🌞

@sunlovin congrats! This one is a m. spinosissima, but I do have a rhodantha right next to it in the pot. They do come in a pretty wide range of colors! 😍

My very first cacti, still going strong. Different #mammillaria in full bloom last spring. Mammillaria rhodantha ssp. pringlei, spinosissima, nejapensis, matudae, and mystax in the far back.

Wow do you fertilize them. If so give me the secret recipe. 😂

@philstalder Hardly ever! If I ever remember/feel ambitious enough to actually do it then I use a weak dilution of Cactus Juice, which I bought purely on the merit of it being the cheapest cactus fertilizer at Home Depot at the time. 🤣

Oh ok. I’ve seen that fertilizer before. I heard most succulents and cactus don’t need any but I want blooms like yours dang it. Lol 😂

I love what they are sitting on! They are great too tho :)

@philstalder They don't NEED it, but they do seem to like it. It definitely makes a difference. I'm so lazy/sparing about fertilizing that one little bottle has lasted me 3 or 4 years. 😅 @heatherdirtyhands Thanks! It's a cast iron garden chair that I had sandblasted and repainted.

Haha me too. I have so many bottles, bags of fertilizer designated for certain plants sitting in my shed gathering dust. Lol 😂

That a beautiful arrangement @usgardentags here’s your winner, I mean look at it ! 😎

Wow, thanks @docthrill , that's high praise! ☺️ @philstalder , ugh same story here with the fertilizers! I'm SO BAD about it! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Cactus Juice comes in a small bottle, so I just keep it under the kitchen sink since I use it mostly to fertilize my indoor plants.

I agree @usgardentags @docthrill @beatnikcrab

This is a really beautiful collection. Neat to see them all together so you can compare all the differences. 🌞💚

@sunlovin thank you! These were my first cacti, and I guess they're what got me hooked. 🤔 It really is interesting how different, and yet similar Mammillarias are.