Introduction to Succulents & Cacti: Cacti Culture for Newbies

Table of Contents

Introduction
Introduction to Succulents
The General Cultivation of Succulents and Cacti
Temperature
Air and Light
Watering
Soil
Planting Your Succulents
Growth from leaves
Growing Your Plants through Cuttings
Repotting and replanting
Growing succulents through offsets
Saving Your Cacti from Pests and Diseases
Aphids
Mealy bugs
Thrips
Red spiders
Conclusion
Author Bio
Publisher

Introduction

The moment you hear the word “cactus,” you immediately visualize an arid desert, with the poor lonesome cowboy riding away into the sunset on his trusty horse, singing “I am far away from home,” with a buzzard eyeing him greedily, and a cactus somewhere in the background, looming over him. If you have seen this in one spaghetti western, you have seen it in all…
But cacti and succulents are just not prickly pears, and Opuntias not to be touched by Mowgli, while he is singing along with Baloo unless he wants a Paw full of spines and thorns. All over the world, people have finally woken up to the potential of cactus and succulent plants as indoor as well as outdoor beautifiers of surroundings, especially when they are planning to plant ornamental plants, which have adapted themselves down the centuries to every sort of condition, and they can survive.

This book is for those people, who have decided to know more about cactuses and succulents. Man is an instinctive collector of things, from orchids to butterflies. Once he found that all over the world, he could get more than 500,000 different varieties of succulents and cacti, he decided to add these plants to his collection repertoire. That is the reason why botanists are so fascinated with the lifestyle of these living objects, so that they can see the different natural development and changes which take place with the passing of time during the growth cycle of these particular plants.