Back in March, I received seeds from four different epiphyllum mother plants. For those who don't know what they are, epiphyllum are a family of tropical jungle cacti that are epiphytes and grow in trees with little to no soil in the wild. Sometimes they're also referred to as orchid cactus due to their ornate blooms. I started all of the seeds at the end of the month in peat pots(big mistake) and within just a week they started to sprout.
After they developed their first true stems they just stopped growing, which from what I've read, should be expected.They usually don't start sending out lots of growth until after the first year. Then it came time to re-pot each seedling into a larger container, and this is where the peat pots were a mistake... Every plant had to be removed without damaging the roots. In all there was about 120 seedlings, that were all re-potted into four inch pots. Smaller pots would have been better but they were hard to find and using the larger pots will eliminate the need to re-pot again in a year. Within three years the seedlings should be developed enough that they'll produce their first bloom. Every seedling should produce different results with flower form, growth habit and vigor so it'll be interesting to see what happens. Once they do bloom any plants with undesirable characteristics can be culled out.
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| Seedlings in peat pots. |
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| Close up of a seedling. |
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| Whole shelf of seedlings under grow lights. |
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Just started a second batch of seeds at the end of July, in a seed starting mix. So far a lot of the seeds have sprouted and hopefully they'll be easier to work with in the seed starting mix than in the peat pots.
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| Second batch of epiphyllum seedlings. |
