new sowings

[Carlo & Daniele]

Hello everybody, even if many members here are from Europe, there are also other members from Australia and so on; there season is starting now, but here is winter time.
It's some years we sow during winter under artificial light and get good results.
What are you going to sow this time?
If you have photos of the new seedlings post them here!

[gk80]

Hello Carlo & Daniele,

What kind of light do you use?
And how do you keep your arios under artificial light? (i.e. distance from the light, substrate, daylenght, temperature, etc)

I always sow under fluorescent lights, even in spring. I get fantastic results with most species, but I'm out of luck with arios and this is why I ask.
Germination is great and they develop a few tubercles, but then they turn dark green and stop growing until I place them in the greenhouse where they receive sunrays through a 50% shadecloth.

Do you have any advice to keep them growing under artificial light?

Thank you so much

[Carlo & Daniele]

Hello gk80,
we use fluorescent lights, we keep seedlings insides closed boxes at a distance of about 15-20 cm.
13-14 h per day, temperature is about 25°C, maybe a bit more in the boxes.
We principally sow the more rare species during winter, and one or two weeks about sprouting we graft them on pereskiopsis or selenicereus. Once grafted you can keep the grafted seedlings at a distance of about 5 cm from the light, then if they are too strong you can put them a bit more distant.
At the moment we have astros and arios seedlings, we sew them last week. Concerning arios, they do not grow a lot under artificial light, that's because we graft the main part of them and temperature is not so high to make them very big.

[gk80]

Hello Carlo & Daniele!! Thank you so much for your answer.
I'm really impressed about the distance you keep between the seedlings and the lights.
Take a look at my setup on the pictures below. I keep my plants as close as 2cm. Some of them (the pseudolithos and the navajoa, for example) are even closer. You can see the navajoa is thiner at the base... that's because I used to keep them farther from the lights.





The arios are about 10cm.
The fluorescent lights are too weak, that's why I keep them that close.
But I will try placing them a bit further.
What kind of fluorescent light do you use?

This seedlings are 5 months old. They're under fluorescent lights at about 5cm. Seeds are from my plants. There's a kikko mother, a fukuryou mother and many koh-yo mothers. As for the fathers, I didn't kept track of them. It's too difficult because the greenhouse is full of flying insects. This year I will solve this problem.



And this ones are 11 months old. Also under fluorescent lights at about 1cm. I already have to take them to the greenhouse, but I'm out of space. They will have to wait.




I already have the space prepared for sowing... maybe next week if I've some time.


Any comments and suggestions are welcomed 

[Carlo & Daniele]

great fukuryu hekiran in the last photo!
we use a couple of fluorescent lights, one is about 10000 K and the other 6500 K.
But how many lamps one next to the other do you use for such a small distance? Because you know there is a cone of efficiency for the light, and if you keep so close the cone basis is very short.

[gk80]

I have 4 fluorescent lights 5cm apart from each other. Thank you!!

[Carlo & Daniele]

which kind of light do you use?

[gk80]

I have a rack, 125cm long, with 4 shelves.
Each shelv is illuminated by 4 fluorescent tubes (40W each one).
Each fluorescent tube is placed about 5cm away from the next one.
Here is a picture... sorry for the bad quality... it's difficult to set up a good lighting at this time of day so I just pointed and shooted:



The trays with plants and seedlings are placed on top of a sheet of thermal insulator to prevent heat of the lower lights from boiling the plants on the upper levels.

[Carlo & Daniele]

Great setting, compliments!

this was our setting of last year for graftings:



need to check if we have photos of the setting of new sowings

[gk80]

That looks amazing. I always admire your grafting skills. Unfortunately, I'm not good at grafting. Almost all my collection is own-roots plants except for some astros I bought on China.

I've a lot of big hylocereus which I never been able to make them "fat". All three ribs are too thin. I see the astros from China and the hylocereus stocks are fat.

And about pereskiopsis, I think the problem is that I never took the time to prepare a good ambient.

And when I graft on myrtyllo, trichocereus or echinopsis, I get all good grafts... but the scions never start growing.
Only a few were 100% successful and are growing ok.

This year I will have to learn because I've a lot of variegated seedlings from the last season:

[Carlo & Daniele]

gk, those variegated seedlings look great!
this is a box of new sowings from this year, we did it two weeks ago:



same setting, but photo was taken two years ago

[gk80]

That's fantastic!!
Do you keep the box under fluorescent light?
The seedlings looks perfect. Bright green but not etiolated.
What kind of soil do you use? All your seedlings are stand and straight. Most of the time I get some seedlings that will germinate on the side and I have to fix them so they stand up.
Also, what do you do with the discarded seedlings?
I never throw away any of them and now I'm running out of space and it takes longer and longer to care for all of them.
And I'm sowing about 2000 to 3000 new astros each year 
Oh, sorry for so many questions. Congratulations for your plants!!!

[Carlo & Daniele]

That's fantastic!!
Do you keep the box under fluorescent light?
The seedlings looks perfect. Bright green but not etiolated.
What kind of soil do you use? All your seedlings are stand and straight. Most of the time I get some seedlings that will germinate on the side and I have to fix them so they stand up.
Also, what do you do with the discarded seedlings?
I never throw away any of them and now I'm running out of space and it takes longer and longer to care for all of them.
And I'm sowing about 2000 to 3000 new astros each year 
Oh, sorry for so many questions. Congratulations for your plants!!!

Thanks for the compliments! Yes we keep the boxes under arificial light. We use a soil made with 1/3 pomice 1/3 lava 1/3 normal soil.
If the cultivar is quite strong, almost all the seedlings will grow straight.
This year that we sow more rare cultivars, they are not so nice as the previous ones, but a part of them is already grafted...
About discarted seedlings, it's always a pity to trow them away, but they keep a lot of space...if you find someone you can give away for free.

[Carlo & Daniele]

update:

[AstrophytumCultivars.com]

Hello,
Here are mine






Soil: Zeolite 1-2mm http://www.inamarble.com/zeolite.html