The story of Chemical Shaman's Dick
July 27, 2014 was a cool overcast day in Melbourne Australia. On this day, Shaman Australis board member Sam Frankel, better known as ‘ferret’, would change the Trichocereus collecting world forever.
July 27, 2014 was a cool overcast day in Melbourne Australia. On this day, Shaman Australis board member Sam Frankel, better known as ‘ferret’, would change the Trichocereus collecting world forever.
One lucky day your pal SanPedroPrints was on eBay searching for cacti that he definitely did not need. But then, what's this, no seriously what the actual fuck are you?
Fall and winter is a good time to start seeds, they don't require too much light at first and it gives you something fun to do with plants while everything outside is a sad, dysfunctional hellscape. I get my seeds on eBay mostly, but Etsy, Reddit and other places have seed sellers too. There are a lot of methods, and I didn't make this one up myself, I forgot the name though Alright, ready to get going? Great, me too. Let's start with supplies:
You've read about them, you've seen pictures, and now you want your very own. Here are some tips on buying San Pedro cacti like Echinopsis/Trichocereus peruvianus, pachanoi, bridgesii/lageniformis etc in 2021.
Grafting cacti might seem like magic. That's because it is. Like all things related to nature, there are a million ways to do this. The more you learn, the more things you thought were true turn out to be only mostly true, or outright wrong.
Apart from propagating, grafting is the thing that really drew me to growing cacti. I had first learned about grafting plants when reading about the surviving grape vines of europe being supported by grape stocks resistant to whatever was killing them but never really gave it much though other than "wow, it's cool you can do that"
Later, I learned about guerilla grafters that graft fruiting branches like apples and stonefruit to trees in cities, converting them from decorative to a food source, and that was one of the first times I really started to think of all the other possible applications of grafting plants
Flash forward years later and I'm reading about lophophora. You know the ones, slow growing, said to reach maturity after 30 years sometimes, and come to find out all about grafted lophs and the enourmous world of grafted cacti.
So, now you're like, hey shut up and tell me how to graft stuff. Cool, same page, here we go:
One of the first things that drew me to cacti was their ability to be cut and turn into a new cactus. There are many different ways to propagate cacti, and if you have one healthy cactus, you have unlimited (time dependant).
First of all, all cacti are beautiful. Secondly, what am I talking about here? If you are outside of the trichocereus/san pedro cactus scene you may not be familiar with the term P.C. in reference to cacti. Trichocereus.net's write-up here is by far the best I have found