Welcome back furry one | Repotting store bought cactus.

Look what I got! Yes - another spiky fella.
I had this one before. It was one of the first cactus I got and managed to bloom. But then it decided to rot and die (of course it was not my fault..).
Since then I promised that I will have it again. It is round, dark green and has very tiny spines hidden in super soft fluff.

So when I saw a pot of 5 of those in a shop while grocery shopping I had no choice really :p

And so Echinopsis subdenudata is back.
Five of them!

And now to the less fun part.
When you buy a cactus in a regular market first thing you should do is repot it. They all come from huge nurseries that plant them in turf or some coconut stuff. That is not a good substrate for cacti (or any succulent) and even though the plant does look nice and it probably will grow if you leave it in it, it is not exactly what they need and it may cause troubles later on. So that needs to be removed and the new friend should get a proper shitty cactus mix.

Another reason is to check what is actually going on with the roots system. It may happen is it rotted (happened to me before), or has bugs or is doing just fine and there is nothing to worry about. Based on that you can decide what treatment or conditions it will need after the change.

That's the theory.
Let's do what needs to be done. Remove the pots and start getting rid of the substrate.

This thing was bone dry! I was hoping I will be able to remove it dry, but I already broke some roots and seeing that the cactus doesn't really have lots of them, I decided to wash the rest under the sink.

Poor thing got all wet. Potting up had to wait till the next day. I left them bare rooted to dry up. I also managed to detach the biggest one so that will go into a separate pot. The 4 smaller ones will stay together (that was the initial plan anyway).

The next day I mixed some fresh cactus soil (shitty soil, sand, perlite, a tiny bit of regular (fluffy) potting soil, lava rocks and some regular rocks I had on hand - basically keep it more mineral and fast draining than organic), picked the pots and started the more fun part.

In the meantime I decided to split the little ones as well. They were all tangled together and were growing on an angle which made potting a bit of a challenge. So now I have 3 small together and 2 larger ones separately in different size pots. It will also be a nice experiment to see which ones will grow better since they are all the same age and come from the same place.

_{Mean little spines are hiding in that fluff}

They don't have tremendous amount or roots, but are healthy.
Now I will keep them dry for a few days and then gently pour some water to the trays so the soil can slowly take it from there. I will keep them in shade until I see them growing. That means they started to grow new roots and are able to drink water with nutrient.
Exposing them to the sun too early might actually dry them too much since they cannot hydrate and they might die (not my fault again of course).

And since I already had all the pots and soil out I got some other cacti that were still growing in shared pots and split them to separate ones. Those are 2 year old I grew from seed. They are big enough to live on their own now.

Mucho better!

_{Very satisfying view!}

Job done.
Now I can proudly pat myself on the back :)

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This is the first one I had. Looks like it was less furry than the new ones, but it is the same type.
Cannot wait to see those flowers again!

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_{Shot with Sony a7 + Carl Zeiss 35mm F2.4 Flektogon lens
All photos and text are my own.}

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