Episode 206: talking cacti with Ulrich Haage
Ulrich Haage at Kakteen Haage nursery in Erfurt, Germany.
Transcript
Episode 206
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Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast, the podcast for the people who like houseplants and that's you, isn't it? Yes, I thought so! I'm your host Jane Perrone and in this week's show we're talking cacti and succulents with a legendary nurseryman, Ulrich Haage, of German cactus nursery, Kakteen Haage, and I answer a question about a brutal chop to a Monstera deliciosa.
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Jane: My hand is very sore right now. There are two reasons for that: reason one, I have been writing hundreds, and I do mean hundreds, of cards to Patreon subscribers! If you're outside the UK your card is, at this moment, in the post, if you're listening reasonably soon after publication, obviously, and if you are in the UK, I am still writing those cards. Obviously, they won't take as long to arrive, so they will go in the post this coming week. So, in other words, if you're a Patreon at the Ledge-end or Superfan level, look out for your card and if you get your card please, please put it on social media and tell me how messy my handwriting is and how you can't read it because I have appalling handwriting! I should say that my daughter wrote the labels for the ones that had extra characters in it so that's why the writing on the front of the card is neater than the writing inside. Second reason why I have a sore hand, I've been putting together a wardrobe for my son - never let me buy flat pack furniture again listeners! - and my hand is really sore as a result.
Thank you to my new Patreons this week, Amanda, Monica, RileyH, I hope I've said that right, and Carol all became Ledge-ends this week, so thank you, round of applause to you! If you want to find out how to join the Ledge-end clan, or the Superfan clan, or the Crazy Plant Person clan of On The Ledge patronage, then check out the show notes at janeperrone.com. It's quite easy, you can choose to pay monthly or get a discount if you pay annually. All the money that goes into that pot helps to support the show, paying for cool things like transcriptions and my assistant Kelly.
Some lovely feedback from the Leca episode! Thank you to Leon, long-term listener and, indeed, a plant science professional, for pointing out my mispronunciation of the word cation exchange. This is the problem when you spend all your time with your head in books and you never actually hear these words spoken. So I talked about cation exchange in relation to Leca and I called it "cation exchange" which is just how I thought it was pronounced, but it's not, it's cation. Leon goes on to explain it refers to positively charged ions, like calcium and iron atoms, or molecules, that have been stripped of electrons. These are in contrast to anions, which are negatively charged atoms or molecules in the soil, like sulphate, that has more electrons than protons. Thank you, Leon! I'm always learning and always happy to be corrected by those who know better, so thank you for that! I shall now say "cation exchange" from now on.
Thank you also to asterisk, who put a comment on the show notes on my website, janeperrone.com, and asterisk - that's literally what they call themselves - have said that they really recommend soaking Leca for a day before using it for the first time. I did talk about rinsing. They're suggesting soaking it for a whole day because that helps to get rid of more of that dust that gets lodged in all the pores. And asterisk, you apologise for your wobbly English; your english is perfect! I salute you! That's somebody with a smattering of Italian and very poor French after years of learning at school! You're doing great!
Vivian got in touch from Calgary, Alberta - oh, I bet it's chilly there right now; lovely place though! - asking about Leca, and Vivian is still confused. I'm sorry you're still confused, Vivian! Yes, you're right, it has no nutritional value. Vivian is still confused about feeding processes for Leca, so if you're using it as your entire substitute for soil, so there's no soil involved, then yes you're going to be required to add every single drop of nutrients that plant will need. That includes the main three - nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium - but also the trace nutrients that are generally quite available in soil and therefore are often not added into houseplant fertilisers, although yes, caveat to that, some of the more modern houseplant feeds are starting to introduce more of these trace nutrients. So what do you do? Well, what you need to look for, Vivian, is a hydroponic houseplant fertiliser. If you happen to have a grow shop or a hydroponic shop where you live, I would go there and ask for advice because they will be able to help you and negotiate the minefield that is feeds for hydroponic systems. There are so many different products out there. The main things you need to be looking for is that it's a feed that's for hydroponics.
Now, some of the houseplant feeds that can be used on organic substrates can also be used on hydroponics, so I'm thinking in the UK of one called Liquid Gold Leaf. I'm sure there are others. Basically, read the small print on your label, see exactly what that feed is meant to cover, but you're looking for a feed that is something that you can easily dilute and that contains both the main three nutrients plus all the trace nutrients. Those should be listed on the label and you should be able to see exactly what you're getting. But, yes, seek advice from your grow shop, or hydroponics shop, but that's where to start looking for that hydroponic feed and making sure that you are carefully monitoring what you're adding. I should do more on hydroponics! Let's schedule that in for 2022, shall we? I hope that helps a little bit, Vivian.
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Jane: If you were to ask me about my happy place, it would probably be a toss-up between riding along a beach on a horse, not on a bicycle, or spending time in a big glasshouse looking at plants, probably, in my case, cacti and succulents. So I was delighted to welcome Ulrich Haage, I hope I've said that right, onto On The Ledge podcast; a fellow podcaster and the man in charge of the wonderful German cactus nursery, the oldest cactus nursery in the world apparently, Kakteen Haage! To start, I wanted to find out how this historic nursery began.
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Ulrich: The cactus stuff is starting about 200 years ago now. In 1822, my ancestor went to Saxonia and he had an apprenticeship in the Royal Court in Saxony. To make it short, he was quite good in his job, even in the earlier years, so he finished this apprenticeship with, I think, great success. He received a cutting of the Queen of the Night from the royal head gardener, so he went back home to Erfurt and he started running a nursery. I think a lot of people know when you get in contact with cacti, you will stick on it, probably, quite sure, and so he did! He started the nursery and quite soon he was specialised also in cacti, so this was the reason he started doing a job with cacti which was quite rare in this time. The history is going back even further. We know there have been gardeners back to 1684 here in Erfurt.
Jane: Obviously, Queen of the Night was right there, from the beginning. What other main species, or genera, that you're growing now - are you seeing particular demand for certain things from your customers?
Ulrich: Yes, that's changing all the time, that's quite true. My grandfather, Walter Haage, he was very keen on Astrophytum, the Star Cactus. He wanted to become a botanist, in the golden 1920s. I think it's probably the same crazy time as we have right now. So he had time to do scientific work and he chose the genus Astrophytum to do back-crossing, which was the common scientific work to find out relationships between two species. From this time, we have a very huge collection of quite old Astrophytum stock plants. Of course, we have many others, so when I look back in history you will find there are plants very common and a few years later, the star is fading, so the interest is going back and another thing is coming up. So I think, in this time, we have a lot of interest in Hoya or in epiphyllum or epicactus hybrid, so it's the epiphytic growing cacti from the trees. So we find a different interest right now.
Jane: So if the epiphytes are on the rise, are there things now that are a lot less popular? What's not popular that you've had to reduce your production on?
Ulrich: About 20 years ago we found a big interest in plants which are covered by scientists, endangered plants, cacti. We tried to propagate a lot of those plants and then I think people got interested because the prices were reasonably high. So many, many plants... I think it was the time eBay was starting going through the market, so we found a lot of private collectors propagating Ariocarpus. Sooner or later, you could buy, I don't know, a lot of older plants on eBay, so we had to decide what to do with our propagation. We decided to put all those freshly-propagated plants in a smaller glasshouse because, when we would try to sell them, I was a bit afraid of flooding the market. It's about 20 years ago. The plants had a good time to grow now, they look really beautiful. It was about eight years ago, nobody wants to buy Ariocarpus, but I think there is a coming interest up right now and I hope to have those plants back on the market.
Jane: That's interesting! Ariocarpus, I guess, in a way, perhaps a bit less well-known than something like Haworthia, but they're a similar kind of rosette cactus. The one that I keep seeing on Instagram, I guess this is a cultivar, called Godzilla, with a roughly... I guess it looks like Godzilla is the idea? That one seems to be really popular on Instagram because it looks so weird.
Ulrich: If the main part of a genus is going common, quite often you will find something new, a cultivar or a rare or new discovered species. So nothing is gone forever, I think. So you still have people which are working scientifically with their plants and I think there is still interest over the years, but I'm talking about the larger numbers of sales.
Jane: Yes, I think the crazes do come and go. Do you have to keep an eye on social media and what's going on in terms of what you're seeing, trend-wise? Is that hard to keep on top of?
Ulrich: Yes, that's right. We've got a lot of plants, especially from Asia, Thailand and they have amazing plants which I have never seen before. They have red-coloured Euphorbias, Godzilla is one of it, and I think they have greenish or reddish plants of this cultivar. There are many plants which will be rare, or not coming to Europe at least.
Jane: Let's talk about Hoya because I know that you grow lots of Hoyas and I know that they are something that is, at the moment, at the top of the wheel of fortune, if I can say? Lots of people want Hoyas. Has that been something you've rapidly expanded in the last couple of years?
Ulrich: We started back in... it must be about 2007. This story is also quite interesting. We got a contact from the son of a colleague of my grandfather, from Netherlands. He was quite keen on Hoyas. His father was a cactus gardener too, so this was the reason for the friendship with my grandfather. He came back later with Hoya and, I don't know, I think he went around the world to collect and to discover Hoyas all over. Later, he decided to close the nursery and he offered us his collection to keep. This way we had, from one day to another, a huge Hoya collection with a lot of rare stuff. To be honest, it's quite difficult for a cactus gardener to keep up with Hoyas because usually they have a complete opposite way of cultivation because they need wet and slightly shady, moist conditions in the glasshouse. So we have to water the plants, which is kind of a horror for any cactus gardener, so it was quite difficult for us to get used to this strange habit of treating plants!
Jane: How many different Hoya species and cultivars, roughly, are you growing?
Ulrich: I think it's about 160. Currently these are the plants we can propagate from. We have a bunch of plants which we just keep, in the hope to get a handful of cuttings some time. So we have some more prob... difficult word!... problematic plants, which don't really grow for us.
Jane: Well, I sympathise! I've got a couple of Hoyas which I just can't get to grips with how to grow, or how to get them to grow with any... they sort of put on a spurt of growth and then that's it for another year. My Hoya obovata is one of these and I got very excited when it put out two leaves in the springtime and then I managed to damage one of them accidentally, which is annoying, and since then it's just sat there and I don't know what else I can do! It's amazing because then some other Hoyas I've got, they just sit there for a couple of years and they suddenly go crazy, so who knows? I think Hoyas are wonderful plants but sometimes they can be a bit of a mystery.
Ulrich: That's true, absolutely.
Jane: Do you find that it's, and I don't really like this word, but the splash Hoyas that are the most popular? The ones that have got silvery markings and lots of variegation on them?
Ulrich: Yes, that's true. I look at plants with two eyes. One is the part which is interesting for me and the other one is what people are expecting and I think people are going mad about the splashed plants, that's true, especially with Hoya.
Jane: Oftentimes, these plants are being sold as splash, which obviously is not a taxonomic description, but I'm thinking of my Hoya mathilde, which is a hybrid but has, sort of, splashy leaves. Is there any way that I can make it more splashy?
Ulrich: I think it's a sport. It's like variegation. There is a theory you could change this with over-fertilisation, but there are also studies which say it's not true. So I'd never try to manipulate plants like this. I'm not sure if there is a way, so I don't have any idea how to change one or another way.
Jane: Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? I don't really want to mess up my Hoya mathilde by over-fertilising it, or experimenting too much. I'm not that bothered about how many silver splashes it has on it. If I had endless room and time I think I'd get some cuttings going and try different locations and feeding regimes. I'm sure one of my listeners will be able to do that because they're endlessly inventive! It is interesting to see how these trends change. I'm thinking, at some point, there might be a trend where somebody just wants a plain green leaf! Maybe the tables will turn in a few years but, for the minute, the variegation seems to be really, really popular!
Ulrich: Yes, that's true.
Jane: One of the questions I wanted to ask was about things that I used to be able to buy easily that you don't seem to be able to get so commonly and I can't figure out why this is. So I'm thinking about some of the Rat Tail Cacti species and things likeEchinopsis chamaecereus, the Peanut Cactus. I've mentioned this on the podcast before. I seem to remember them being really quite common when I was a kid, but they don't seem to be now. Is that just lack of propagation material or is there some other reason?
Ulrich: No, I think it's lack of interest. When you go back to the time when those plants were quite common and you could find them everywhere... I think it's a question, most of the plants which are offered right now, you just have to check the channels where the plants come from. When you go to the supermarket, or the garden centre, there are huge nurseries, large scale. It's 10,000 square metres of glasshouses and they maybe propagate on these areas maybe five or 20 different species of cacti. So you have a very small number of species but a huge number of output, which automatically reduces the availability of a wider range on the market. This makes a cactus quite obvious, so you can see a large number of plants on every spot on the market. So if there is a small nursery specialised in, let me say, propagating the Peanut Cactus, you won't be able to see it on the market because they produce a lot of plants, maybe they produce every year 10,000 plants, which was, 20 years ago, a big number. So they have to be compared with a number of 200 million or two billion other plants which are on the market, so you won't see them. It's just a question of the numbers but they are around and there are still, of course, smaller nurseries which are specialised and produce a larger number of different species or genus. So, in Italy, Panarotto Cactus, for instance, and they're specialised in Echinopsishybrids or Peanut Cactus, they have a wide range. It's quite funny you ask just this for this plant! We got a collection from a hybridiser who died three years ago. He was also specialised in the Peanut Cactus. He made a lot of really breathtaking hybrids which are coming on the market, probably, in the coming years.
Jane: Ooh, how exciting!
Ulrich: Yes, sure, and I think they are around but yes, it's just like finding one drop of water in a river - it's quite difficult. I think this is the reason.
Jane: That's a really good point. As you say, if you've got a huge economy-of-scale of producing cacti, of course they're going to produce millions of a particular species that works and that they can sell and that reaches a certain size. You get less variation than a small grower, who is just propagating on a much smaller scale. That's a really interesting point. I guess that's why it's great that we have got the smaller growers doing interesting breeding and doing cool stuff because, of course, demand is there, so we need to have these huge growers, but also these specialists are doing some really cool things as well. Would you like to stake a claim to your favourite cactus/succulent species? Is there anything that you absolutely love but you can't understand why it's not more popular?
Ulrich: Yes, of course! I mean there are always plants which... there is always a reason. I just think about Opuntia. Nobody really likes Opuntia because they're just spiny and they have these ugly, fine glochids which stay in your finger for a month or so and you won't be able to remove it, even with a pair of tweezers and nobody really likes them, but they're fun! To be honest, I like to eat them, but most people stay as far as possible from those plants because they have had maybe a bad contact with them in earlier times, which I had too! There is a funny story. When I grew up, as a kid, we had a pool in the nursery which was used to collect water in case of fire. When we were kids, we were allowed to have a bath in there when all the workers went home in the summer. The problem is on one side of this pool was the water and on the other side was the bed with the Opuntia. Sometimes if you jumped into the water... one or two times I fell into the Opuntias and it was quite an amazing afternoon! Then getting an operation from my mother, to get all the spines, the tiny glochids, removed from the skin!
Jane: Wow! That sounds interesting.
Ulrich: Yes, but this is probably another way to get infected by cacti!
Jane: Yes, exactly. Very true! It's interesting on the Opuntia - I've just written a chapter of my book about Opuntia microdasys and talking about all the different ways that people tried to remove the glochids. Just going back to your edible Opuntia point, are you eating the pads? The fruits? What part do you enjoy?
Ulrich: Usually everything! Once a year we have a cactus dinner which is mainly made from the Opuntia pads but, to be honest, we don't produce them here anymore because we would probably need one or two glasshouses just to produce a lot of those pads, so we're buying them directly from Mexico. You can use them for every part, so it's a five-course dinner, or at least a five-course dinner, so a lot of Opuntia pads can make a soup, or a salad, or you can have them as vegetable with meat or fish and, of course, you have them as a vegetable on their own. We quite often have them also for dessert and, of course, we also will have the tunas or the pitayas, the fruit of the Queen of the Night were quite frequently used for the dinner too. I'm always amazed how creative cooks can be if they are free to decide what to do.
Jane: How exciting to have a whole meal made from cacti! I think that sounds so cool. If you've got pads with spines, is there a special way to remove the spines? What do you do about that?
Ulrich: Well, it's quite easy. You just take your sponge, an ordinary kitchen sponge, you just rub the spines from their areoles, if you have very big areoles, you can just use a sharp knife doing a cut and cutting off just the areoles with the spines and then you can just remove it with a towel. That's it! It's quite easy.
Jane: Oh, great! Okay! Well, I've never seen them... have I seen them for sale in this country? Maybe if I went to London, probably, I would be able to get hold of them. I have had a meal made of cacti which was at the Cactus World Live event that was held here in the UK a couple of years ago, pre-Covid, and it was delicious! So I'm excited to be able to try some more.
Ulrich: I'm quite sure I have seen Opuntias in Sainsbury's.
Jane: Really?
Ulrich: Yes, I'm quite sure, but it's a few years ago.
Jane: I'm going to have to look more closely in the vegetable aisles!
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Jane: More from Ulrich shortly, but now it's time for Question of the Week, which comes from Zoe, and Zoe is looking for some advice about a Thai Constellation Monstera which, Zoe says, is about the same age as mine and from the same source. Yes I think it probably is. So you were talking... well, I got mine in September 2018, so where are we? So, however old that makes it! Zoe sent a picture of her Thai. It does look about the same size as mine. I guess slightly more mature because Zoe has not chopped hers, whereas I have. Zoe says, "I haven't taken any cuttings from it yet, but we've moved house and it's become unwieldy and hard to find a place in the house. Would it be a terrible time to take cuttings now? I think half the problem is that it's quite top-heavy. It's not actively pushing out new leaves but it is putting out a new aerial root. I don't want to lose those beautiful top leaves but need to do what's best for the plant, just not sure if that's cutting it now, or waiting?" Well, I have a lot of personal experience on this one. What I think I would do, Zoe, is I would air-layer the top of the plant now, start doing that now so that come spring, you can then cut just below where you've air layered it. That way you will have two plants then you will have the top growth which will have all the beautiful really fenestrated mature leaves and you'll have the plant below. At that point you can make a choice, you might want to put them both into one bigger pot or you might want to have them in separate pots, but the plant below will bounce back very quickly.
As you may remember, listeners, I've done this with both of my Thai Constellations, so air-layering with this kind of plant is really quite simple. If you were doing something like a Dracaena, with a woody stem, I would recommend scoring the bark and all sorts, but with this plant, really, all you need to do is just get some - well, what would I use? - probably a clear plastic bag and some coir, or some moss, and then you've just got to do the very awkward business of wrapping that package around a node, where you've got some aerial roots coming out ideally, and make sure it's damp. That substrate, whatever it is, the moss or the coir, wrap it 'round and secure it in place. The reason for the clear plastic is then you can see when the roots are growing and within a few weeks it should root quite vigorously into that little mass of substrate that you've provided. Once it's rooted really well you can then just chop it off, so that should probably take you, Zoe, to roughly springtime and then you can just cut off just below the place where you've propagated, where you've grown those extra new roots. Use a hacksaw, or something like that because, I can see on your plant, it's the same as mine, it's going to be at least two, to three, to four, to five centimetres across that stem, in diameter. So get a clean hacksaw - I just sterilise mine by running it under naked flame of my gas hob - and then hack away below the rooted point. Remove the plant - you might need to trim a bit once you get it off if you haven't managed to get that cut exactly where you wanted it, trim that down - then you can just plant that into the soil. You could put it in water, if you wanted, but I would probably just put it straight into soil. If you've got that good root system going and the roots are reasonably extensive, they'll probably go absolutely nuts, so fill that container before you chop it off. Provided you've got that root system going, then it can go straight into soil. You'll find that spring will be a good point, as the light gets longer, days get longer, for the base of the plant, which you've chopped, to regenerate with new leaves and what you'll find will happen, is that a shoot will come out just slightly to the side of the stem and send the plant off in a slightly different direction and you will get new growth and it's as easy as that!
This is a really tough plant. If you've been growing it this well so far, Zoe, this will not be a problem for you. That is what I'd recommend doing because that way you won't risk taking off that top part and any rot problems occurring at any point, particularly in the winter, when growth might be slower. That's what you need to do. I hope I've explained that well enough. I'm just trying to think if I've missed anything out, in terms of my explanation. The other thing to say, is you can buy these rooting balls, which are like plastic moulds that go around the stem, and you can fill them with the substrate and they open up quite easily. I presume they come in quite large sizes, which is what you would need for this project because, obviously, the stem is really thick. Personally, you know me, clear plastic bag from the recycling, bit of substrate, Bob's your uncle, but if you want to go down the more official route, then a rooting ball would work too! That plant just wants to grow, so I have no doubt that it will do very nicely and then it's up to you whether you want to, as I say, put them in together, give one away. If you put them in the pot together, obviously they're going to keep growing but I would recommend this for anyone with a Monstera deliciosa that is getting out of hand; give it a chop, it really won't do any harm and, particularly if you air-layer it first, you are on the road to success.
I hope that helps, Zoe, and I will be answering the festive questions next week. I intend to have a glass of mulled wine by my side and it will be basically unedited. I'm going to go for a sort of stream of consciousness approach, so that could be fun! I have about six or seven questions to answer on everything from Christmas Cactus, to Hippeastrum, to Paperwhite narcissus, so that should be fun. If you've got another question for On The Ledge, please do drop me a line on theledgepodcast@gmail.com and I will do my damnedest to give you some form of answer! Now it's time to head back to our chat with Ulrich.
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Jane: Tell me a little bit about the Christmas period. Is this a big sales period for you? What cacti or succulents are people buying for Christmas?
Ulrich: Well, Christmas Cacti! That's quite easy.
Jane: Of course! I don't know why I didn't think of that! Are they having a resurgence as well? They've always been popular, really. People have had one plant that's lasted for generations. Presumably still really popular?
Ulrich: So , Germans are very serious people, all of them, and they love statistics! I think it's quite interesting, Schlumbergera and Rhipsalidopsis are the only cacti which have an appearance in the German trade statistics! So the group of cacti are not of interest there, so the whole group doesn't exist in statistics, but Schlumbergera do! That's really amazing. So, if you wanted to see the numbers of plants sold in Germany, or even over all over Europe, you can have a number of Schlumbergera, but no other cactus or even in the group of cacti or other such plants.
Jane: Interesting.
Ulrich: Yes, it's quite funny. They are sold in such big numbers and I think it's interesting, especially because there are, I think, three nurseries in Europe producing those millions, or billions, of plants.
Jane: Only three?
Ulrich: Only three; two in Denmark and one in Netherlands.
Jane: Wow, that is amazing! I guess that's a specialist thing, that they just concentrate on that particular species?
Ulrich: Yes.
Jane: Wow, that's incredible! I'm constantly seeing people asking the same question online, which is: "Do I have a Christmas Cactus or a Thanksgiving Cactus?" My answer is always, "Well, who knows really!?" because they all seem to flower at different times and they've been so widely hybridised. Obviously, the Easter Cactus is a different species and is more distinct, but is there really a difference between...? Can you firmly say this is Christmas because it...? Give me chapter and verse because I've never quite got to grips with this.
Ulrich: Yes, it's quite easy. You must help me with a name. So you have a radial flower? Is it right?
Jane: Radial, yes.
Ulrich: It's a circle. When you cut the flower in half, it doesn't matter where you cut, you will always have two identical parts of halves. This is Easter Cactus; this is Rhipsalidopsis. If you have a symmetrical flower, which is like orchids, if you cut an orchid flower in half you have one line where you can cut it to find two identical parts, it's symmetrical.
Jane: So that's the Christmas Cactus we're talking about now? That is symmetrical?
Ulrich: Exactly.
Jane: Then we've got Thanksgiving. This is the one that gets me.
Ulrich: The problem is those plants love to flower. They take nearly every celebration to put out new flowers, so it's quite common to have the Christmas Cacti also flowering on Easter and, of course, they might be able to flower also on Thanksgiving. So this is the reason why they flower. It's quite difficult to get hold of them just on the day of their flower. This is not a secure identification. It's quite difficult. When you just imagine to cut the flowers in half, it's quite easy to identify them.
Jane: Let's just talk about another aspect of Christmas, which is something my listeners are constantly complaining about and I don't know whether you want to put the other side of the argument here, or whether you'll agree, but lots of listeners send me horrified messages and photos of spray-painted succulents and cacti covered in glitter at Christmas time. Cacti that have been dressed as Santa with googly eyes and a hat. This causes great horror to my listeners! What's your take on it?
Ulrich: I think we should also not forget the cactus who's glowing in the dark!
Jane: Yes. I got sent one of those a few years ago.
Ulrich: I didn't like it.
Jane: Hooray! I'm so relieved.
Ulrich: It's really easy. We started with not liking having straw flowers, artificial flowers on the cacti. There you had minor damage on the plant, if you didn't remove the spines from the plant, took them to death. Covering a plant with colour, or spray, or whatever, it will just block out every light and the plant will die. It's quite easy and this is not a thing I want to do with my plants, so I don't like it.
Jane: What are the rationales that the people doing this are using? Is it that they can just make more money because it sells for more?
Ulrich: No, I think it's just a thing... So probably no serious cactus lover will buy a plant which is covered in glitter because he is usually interested in the plant and not in the glitter, which he had to remove to save the plant. So those plants will be bought by people which are not interested in the plants. It's a cover, so they will throw the plant away after Christmas is gone and that's it. I think they are produced... so I know of some nurseries which are producing those plants and they just throw it in the market and that's gone. It's probably not the same customer who is interested in houseplants but it's, I don't know, a wooden Christmas thing for the ledge. I don't think a serious plant person would buy a thing like this.
Jane: A lot of people buy those cacti with the fake flowers on them really believing that the plant is in flower and it's tragic. It happens with other plants as well, like the Strelitzia is often sold with a plastic flower in it which makes me laugh - the Bird of Paradise.
Ulrich: Oh really? I haven't seen that. It's amazing!
Jane: Yes, I've seen that. It's like a stake and it goes into the pot. I don't know whether people believe it's real? I suppose it's showing what it's going to do, but it just seems like a terrible waste of plastic to me.
Ulrich: I got calls and people asking me, "Well, my cactus is flowering but it's dead!" So the plant was rotten but they still had the white, open flower and I asked, "How long was the plant flowering?" "Well, about 10 years!" Funny moment!
Jane: It's not good, is it? You have your own podcast. Tell me a bit about that.
Ulrich: Well, yes, we have a lot of visitors here and I like to walk around the nursery and getting stories told about the plants or history and things like this. I have to tell a lot of stories, as do my parents and my sister, then I came across the idea of not everybody is able to come here, but maybe I can go out to tell them outside. Two or three years ago, interest in podcasts were rising and I said, "Well, that's probably a good idea to bring the stories to the people, instead of getting the people here" and it was just a few months before Covid, so it was quite a good idea, and I love to tell people's stories. Currently, I'm German, thinking of being too serious and trying to be too scientific, so this is one of the reasons why I love your podcast because it's always a thing you can laugh about it and it's really entertaining, which is not so easy for us Germans to be like this!
Jane: I think you're doing yourself a disservice there! I'm so excited that podcasts are opening up more and more in the world of houseplants, different niches, which is absolutely brilliant and I will put a link in the show notes to your podcast. Do you have anything you can tell us about, that you're working on, that you think might be the next big thing?
Ulrich: You mentioned, a minute before, Rat-Tailed Cacti and I think there is a growing interest. I got some signals from the United States, so there are some people who are interested and who are trying to collect more hybrids and probably there is something coming up. My idea is coming from facing an exploding demand on Epiphyllum hybrids, or Epicactus hybrids. We have so many people, especially originated from Asia, which are buying Epicactus hybrids like mad. The first time I realised, we had a quarter of our sales area completely emptied and we had no plants to refill! This was a thing I was never faced with, so probably the nursery was never faced like this. We had nothing to fill in this space and this was really new to us. Believe me, I had several sleepless nights how to go on with this, how to keep with this.
Jane: Because you just sold out completely of those plants?
Ulrich: Yes.
Jane: Oh, wow.
Ulrich: There's nobody who you could buy new plants, or even cuttings, from.
Jane: That's an interesting one to think about for the future and I'm sure you're right, that's on the rise. It's been really fascinating to chat to you and it's so interesting to hear your perspective, as a German cactus nursery, and I love talking to people all around the world, so it's a real treat to talk to you! One day I hope to come and visit and be able to enjoy actually seeing some of your incredible collection - hopefully not diving into a bed of Opuntias in the process!
Ulrich: Well, I don't think so! It's quite safe right now!
[music]
Jane: Thanks so much to Ulrich for joining me this week - what a delight! Do check out the show notes, as ever, for pictures of Kakteen Haage nursery and links to Ulrich's podcast and more.
That's all for this week's show, I shall see you next Friday. I'm off to eat my body weight in mince pies! Take care. Bye!
[music]
Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll, by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel When We Were Kids, by Komiku and I Snost, I Lost by Doctor Turtle. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.
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I talk cacti and succulents with Ulrich Haage of German cactus nursery Kakteen Haage, plus I answer a question about chopping a Monstera.
This week’s guest
Ulrich Haage comes from a dynasty of cacti and succulent growers. His nursery Kakteen Haage in Erfurt, Germany, is reputed to be the oldest cactus nursery in the world.
Cacti growing at Kakteen Haage nursery. Photograph: Jane Perrone.
Check out the notes below as you listen…
We mention a few different genera and species of cacti and succulents. They are:
Astrophytum
Ariocarpus including the cultivar ‘Godzilla’
Peanut cactus - Echinopsis chamaecereus
Rat tail cactus - Disocactus flagelliformis
We also mention two Italian cactus nursery Panarotto Cactus.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
My Monstera ‘Thai Constellation. Photograph: Jane Perrone.
Zoe wants to know what to do about a Monstera ‘Thai Constellation’ that is getting too big for its allotted space.
I have personal experience of this, as I have two plants of a similar age and the provenance. I’d advise air layering the top of the plant before taking it off the plant: this is as simple as wrapping some moss or other damp substrate around a node (the point where the leaf joins the stem) and enclosing that substrate with a plastic bag (I like to use a clear bag so you can see when the roots grow).
If you want to get fancy, you could use a rooting ball which is a plastic mould that replaces the plastic bag. There are various companies selling these balls: I think the best-known brand is the Cutting Globe.
By doing this, by spring the plant will have produced lots of roots and can be chopped off just below that node and planted into a pot. I find a hacksaw the best tool for this job: sterilise it by waving it over a naked flame before you begin cutting.
The original plant will start to regrow, too, putting out a shoot at an angle from the original stem within a few weeks of being cut. The top cutting can be added to the original pot if there’s room, or potted up separately.
Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!
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CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and I Snost, I Lost by Doctor Turtle.