h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Go easy on the Moonraker You would be friend of PHM who is also a fanatic

Websailor

Hello Moonraker ,

At the time of me typing this, you are probably in bed . Here, I have just had my tea and it is now around 7.00 p.m. It always amazes me how the time differs in different countries .

Anyway, onto your lovely 'Big Mama' cactus as you put it on Flickr . It is a lovely healthy cacti with plenty of baby plants growing on it . The two larger babies, you can take off and pot up as they are just the right size. See how they are attached on, if you wear some good thorn-proof gloves you may be able to very gently ease them off. Sometimes, they are attached onto the mother plant so tightly, so you may have to use a sharp knife to gently cut them off as far down as possible. Pot them up into some sandy, gritty compost, if possible. Don't plant to deep, but just enough and so they are stable, and will not fall over when you water them .

I would leave the rest until they are a little bigger, but remove them before the plant gets too crowded. I would carry on watering/caring for the plant as you have been, and hopefully the little babies will take. However, they do not always survive, so don't be too disappointed if some disappear to cacti heaven .

Hope this helps. All the best.

Nigel

Willem, I have just been looking at your photo's . They are wonderful, and look great in 'Slideshow' form .

Nigel

Moonraker, your should be over by now unless there was any extra time. I don't imagine you will be online tonight, so I'll drop you a note tomorrow.

Websailor

Hello Nigel! Good to see you here! Would you immediately plant out the small cacti after cutting them off from the 'mom' or would you first let them dry out a bit and let the wound heal before planting them? Over here, generally, I let cuttings dry out in a shady place for a week or so before planting them, which so far seems to work well.

I'm very happy you enjoy the photos! I'm posting them there as a 'mixed bag' of bird, mammal, reptile, amphibian, insect and plant photos ... I will probably erect some other albums there with more organised content ... but I like the idea of having that album with a lot of varied stuff!

Websailor and Moonraker, I'm not really a sports watcher but my dad is a great rugby fan!

Willem,

My other half watches anything and everything in the sport line, which is why I spend so much time on the computer. That way we are both happy


Websailor

Hi all, First of all Thank's for all the advice, I will move a couple of baby cacti to their own pots soon , we've just had a hard nights rain not sure if it's stopped or not yet .

Now I get drunk most night's, stay at home late night stuff that's when the premier is on ,it's a new channel filler and I will watch it, after all I was involved in sport myself .

Thursday night at about 3:00 am I had just about had my fill when I chanced across the WSB racing at Brands Hatch, well one of my favourite tracks to race and I just had to watch it, ended up very plastered,might have posted here but not sure.

I am also still getting a lot of E Mails from England with old pic's addresses and news almost getting confused even.

I do enjoy all of the pic's that all have been posting and am very glad I found out how to post on flickr myself,

Now I am going to make lunch for myself

Willem, I missed this posting .

<<<>>
I am not too sure Willem. I have always planted my cuttings straight into compost after taking them, and then kept them in a cool place for a few days before moving them into a warmer position.

It shouldn't harm the cacti cuttings if they are planted directly into the compost. However, I would keep them in a shady place for a few days after planting . Water sparingly .

All the best

Nigel

Hi folks! Moonraker I hope the little cactus cuttings take!

Nigel thanks for your answer! Here are some new pictures you might enjoy:

http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/563078054Sqhnkf

Today is Spring day here in South Africa! This morning was a mega-watering session: watered (pretty much) all the winter-resting plants to 'wake them up' ... in particular, the Impala lilies, the Baobabs, the Helicopter Trees, the Star Chestnuts and several of my Euphorbia species. Also made some more cuttings, of Haworthia limifolia var. arcana, a rare species that is in nature confined to the Barberton region. I still have some work ahead of me ... there are plants still needing to be transplanted (a few Impala lilies that have burst their bags; some of my Ipomoea albivenia plants, and a few more carrion flowers) and a few more cuttings to make to multiply a few more species that are ready for it.

Still having nice weather ... a bit cooler today, currently about 22 degrees in the plant house. There were strong winds blowing yesterday, and a bit this morning as well.

Elsewhere in the country there was snow - in the Western Cape mainly - storms and floods, and runaway bush fires, over the weekend!

Hi all , I have been busy with family stuff so didn't have a chance to get to them but I Finally had a bit of time to look at the cacti this morning and using a welding rod (a bit of 1/8 " bar) I managed to lever off some baby plants, just insert rod between mother and baby and just a little outward leverage they easily broke away, each one already has roots formed so this afternoon I will put them into pots , My geek friend came to do some work this morning but I now have thumb shots of a heron , He's coming back.

Last Sunday the family held a Memorial? for Okibachan who died one year ago today, when we went to the cemetery late morning, I noticed A full grown Japanese Grey Heron sitting on an old tree in the middle of the pond just outside the car park.I thought about this for quite a while and decided that this must be his usual feeding spot and may stay all day, after we had finished at Obachan's house I went home, changed and went back to try to get some pic's , this I did but I had trouble with the light reflecting on the birds white feathers as it was a very sunny day . I have now put a few here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/dna/h2g2/brunel/F1694533/ext/_auto/-/http://www.flickr.com/photos/21128589@N02/

Hi Anoldgreymoonraker! If the cacti babies already have roots, they ought to do well!

Thanks for the heron pictures! That is actually the same species we have here: the grey heron, Ardea cinerea. I think the Japanese one is a different *subspecies*, but not a different *species* ... they look pretty much exactly the same! In fact your photos look like they could have been taken over here. We even have turtles like those!

Are there many ponds like that one over there? What are the ponds for?

Oh I forgot to say what I did today:

1. Planted into new bags, the Impala lilies that had burst their old ones.

2. Also planted an Euphorbia excelsa, an Olifants-river Euphorbia; this plant has been a 'cutting' for several months, lying in the shade of the porch over the entire winter, and now it's planted.

3. Planted out some Ipomoea albivenias that were crowded together in bags; they're now each in its own bag except for four very tiny ones that are still two-together in two bags ... will be planted out if they're a bit bigger. Ipomoea albivenia is related to the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas. It also has a 'tuber' but much of this tuber is above-ground, becoming a thick basal trunk or 'caudex' from which annual stems emerge. The flowers are large and whitish.

4. Planted some Cotyledon Orbiculata, Pig's Ear Tacky, cuttings, made several weeks ago.

(Many of our local plants can survive as cuttings for very long periods. In the 'bush' what happens is that browsing or passing animals remove bits of plants, that fall to the ground and can lie there still alive, for very long, eventually striking root and becoming new plants. This mostly happens with bits of stem, but some species can grow new plants from leaves or pieces of leaves as well.)

5. Divided up clumps of a small mesmeb of the genus Rabiea. This plant comes from my uncle Kerneels' farm in the Free State. I found that the plants have 'naturally' divided in the bags already ... some bits of the original plants having disconnected themselves from the parent rootstock. I've planted out fifteen such plants from five bags, and also made a bunch of cuttings that I'll plant in a week or so.

6. Also watered some of my plants, specifically, the Adenia glauca in the plant house, and some of the Haworthia cymbiformis in the northwest corner of the yard.

Tomorrow will be inspection and further watering, plus treatment for plants in need. Toothbrush treatment, or maybe some soapy water, to try and get rid of those pesky and persistent scale bugs.

Hi all , Willem yes we have a lot of ponds all over Japan , most I suspect are man made, they are there for two reasons 1) to irrigate the tambo 2) in case of fire , both traditional and modern Japanese houses are wooden framed and built very close together ,I feel a tangent coming on
I live in what I would class as a rolling hills kind of area ,so these kind of ponds are perfect for around here but, on flatter land in heavily built up areas I often see concrete ponds/water holding areas usually about three mtr square and one mtr deep covered in a wire mesh, these are in case of fire and as often as not if you look closely you will find goldfish in them ,in the dry early evening times of summer you can often hear what I call when a couple of volunteer firefighters will walk around their area banging / clapping two pieces of wood together in a three clap rhythm just to warn everybody that the area is tinder dry and to watch out for fire.

Nice herons Moonraker. They look very similar to ours too except for a few extra markings.

****************

Hi, Willem, catch up later I should be elsewhere as usual!!

Websailor

Hi Websailor! Hi Moonraker! Thanks for the explanation of the ponds.

Over here in South Africa we don't have ponds just lying all over the place ... what we do have, are farm dams. This country is very dry ... about half of it is semi-desert or desert, and most of the rest is savannah, dry woodland and grassland. Natural forests occupy less than 1% of the country's surface (but they ones that are there, are very beautiful).

So most farms need some supply of water. Over here, on the infrequent occasions when it rains, it often rains very hard ... and there are many streams that only run once every few years, during such exceptional rainfall periods. But if the water flow can be dammed up then a supply of water can be held that would last through the dry periods. So most farmers build dams in the lower reaches of such seasonal streams, for making reservoirs of water. (Other sources of water include boreholes, and water led from the big 'national' dams like the Vaal Dam or the Gariep Dam.)

To these dams, many waterbirds are attracted: herons, egrets, ducks and geese, coots, moorhens, dabchicks, darters, cormorants and more! Certain species have become extremely abundant ... almost every 'dam' (and there are about a million of them in the country) will have a population of red-knobbed coots, so there must be many millions of them by now.

Fire is also a problem here in South Africa, though we don't live in paper houses! The grass and trees can become extremely dry over the many months of winter drought, and at the start of spring when temperatures rise, can catch fire with great ease. We are experiencing that right now here ... at the very moment, large parts of our country are burning! (It's the very start of Spring now ... warmer days, but still no rain.) In some cases, humans make things worse ... starting fires ... campfires not put out, or cigarette butts ... and also, there are the plantations of exotic pine and eucalypt trees that have been planted in what, in the course of nature, would have been open grassland. The grasslands are adapted to fire, but the trees not ... and when they burn, they burn very intensely and pose a danger to human houses as well.

I forgot to say what I did yesterday! I watered and inspected and planted out a few plants ... Cyphostemma juttae, or Kobas ... two plants; also some Cotyledon orbiculata, or pig's ear tacky plants.

Today I only watered, and inspected.

OK to bring this up to date! The spring preparations are now mostly done, and I'm now waiting for the rains to start! Today we have about a 30% chance of rain. The days have been very hot and sunny, hitting 35 degrees in the plant house several times.

Hmmm ... I was very busy over the weekend and after as well ... Monday, I mainly did watering and inspection ... Tuesday, I planted some more cuttings ... a Rabiea mesemb; Kleinia stapeliiformes; and Haworthia limifolia var. arcana. Yesterday I watered them. Today I'm gonna take things easy!

Lucky you Willem, I seem to get busier and busier. this last two weeks as been ridiculously hectic. i think I need to find time to take things easy, but next week looks just as bad

Catch up with you soon.

Websailor