W E L C O M E Feel welcome to my virtual windowsill! Most of the cacti you will see on this page are grown in my windowsills here in southern Norway, so this site will show you Cacti that are 'cultivated'. Besides that I will also show a few 'ordinary' plants that I have on my windowsills or in my garden. Most of the pictures of my site is taken with a compact camera with a lousy zoom lens. Nothing extraordinary with the camera, but it explains the lack of closeups here... Many of the seedlings are DirectScans! If you disagree with anything, or wanne supply names for any cacti, my email is here: mycacti@start.no or ICQ 31785699

Sunsets and other pictures of norwegian nature. Pictures of my daughter Silje.

Photo 2 - 5 Mammillaria senilis
Photo 1, 6, 7 Myrtillocactus geometrizans
Hi! Trond!
I'd like to show your plants.
I took 40 photos from your site.
It will be great if you arrange them yourself 6-10 photos for every issue of the magazine. Please give short comments on the photos for every issue of the magazine. For this issue I chose 9 photos. I send you the rest of the photos according to subjects. If you agree give comments to each.
Walery Kalishev Chelyabinsk, Russia

фото 1. Myrtillocactus geometrizans

Hi Walery!
I've grown cacti for around 19 years :) I got my first Opuntia from my grandmother when I was 11-12 years old. My collection have increased a lot over the last 2 years, since I started sowing seeds. The Mammillaria senilis monstrose on the other hand, is one I've grown from seeds myself. The seeds came from SuccSeed in sweden, and out of 15 seeds I sowed, only one were a monstrose/crest, the 5 others that germinated are perfectly normal. The crest is still alive and doing well, and since it is growth season right now, it is getting bigger and bigger, but it grows slow. This grows on it's own roots, and I do not intend to graft it. There are more photos of this in my cactus photoalbum online here: http://public.fotki.com/cactus

фото 2. Mammillaria senilis	фото 3. Mammillaria senilis

Монстрозная Mammillaria senilis - мое собственное детище, взращенное из семян. Семена я получил от SuccSeed (Швеция). Из 15 семян, что я сеял 10 были монстрозно-кристатные и 5 нормальных. Кристата жива до сих пор и в сезон роста (например, сейчас) становится все больше и больше, но с годами рост замедляется. Она растет на собственных корнях и я не собираюсь ее прививать.

фото 4. Mammillaria senilis	фото 5. Mammillaria senilis

The pictures you have taken of the Myrtillocactus geometrizans are not mine. These pictures are taken by Lorraine of K&L Cactus Nursery in USA, which is Lorraines nursery. I've gotten permission from here to use the pictures on my website, but I would have to ask permisson for them too be used in your ezine. Hope that is OK with you.

фото 6. Myrtillocactus geometrizans

You ask: "I am interested in the materials concerning your personal experience in growing colored cultivar forms.

I have not grown colored cultivars from seeds.
I have grafted a couple of seedlings, but only for testing, the seedlings were normal... I do have a very red Gymnocalycium baldianum grown from seeds, it's around 1 year old, and still on it's own roots... I'm thinking about grafting it. I have grafted a chlorophyllfree yellow Mammillaria elongata (From Belgium) but I it's only a few days ago, so I'm not sure how it goes yet.
Most colored cultivars seem to grow pretty slow compared to normal plants, but some have the same growth as normal plants. probably because they are grafted?
I fertilize my plants once or twice trough summer, with special cactus-fertilizer they sell att the garden-shops here.
My soil is ordinary soil bought at the garden-shops. I mix it 50%/50% with gravel. I don't radiate seeds.

фото 7. Myrtillocactus geometrizans

I have had flowers on one of my Gymnocalycium 'Nishiki' (names are always uncertain for the Gymnocalyciums).

And another one have one bud right now, and the Nishiki is budding up again. The flowers on the Nishiki never opened up fully, only around 50% and 2-3 days then died off. No fruit or seeds obtained from it.

I pollinate plants with a small soft paint-brush. I'm only an amateur at this myself, but very interested in it myself for the last year or so. It's hard to find any information at all.

Have a nice day,
Trond
--
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."
Bertrand Russell
MySites: http://come.to/tronds/ E-mail: mycacti@start.no.

Walery Kalishev, Chelyabinsk, Russia, mailto: e-mail