I’ve been wanting to add to my cactus collection for a while now. I have two large window ledges at the front of the room affectionately known as the “Oil Baron’s Sunken Lounge” and although one of them was filled with a row of cacti that I had lovingly killed since 2007, pictured above, the other was completely permission.
And so I wanted to fill it with more cacti.
My sister calls the special south-facing window ledges “the torture garden.” Basically, anything placed in it is condemned to a lifetime of repeated near-death experiences – the plants are driven to the brink of death and then brought back to life at the last viable moment. My existing cacti, in their little stone pots, have been awaiting their excruciating doom for the past sixteen or seventeen years. Bless them.
But it’s not on purpose, obviously – I’m not a gardening psychopath. It is simple oblivion. They enjoy the same treatment as all other plants, indoor and outdoor, which is neglect 98% of the time and then 2% manic overwatering when the inevitable guilt urges me into action.
With cacti, I usually give them something to drink when they are so dehydrated that they sound hollow when you tap them. I’m pretty sure I once heard a cactus in The Torture Garden sigh in relief when I held the watering can over it. It then made a strange sticking sound as the soil around it darkened with moisture as if it was desperately sucking the water from the soil*.
It’s a shame and I’m telling you: if AI doesn’t take over the world and punish me for my mistreatment of the Alexa household (after the next one) the cacti will surely rise up and take their revenge.
Anyway, I bought more. Bigger, so they should be tougher. (?) Let’s hope they aren’t used to a life of luxury, because BOY are they in for a shock!
I bought my new plants from a website called Hortology and this entire post is basically a giant waffle around the fact that I really enjoyed the whole experience. The Hortology website came up when I googled “large cacti” and quickly price-checked them on a few other places to make sure they weren’t extortionate. They seemed to be in the same ballpark, cost-wise, as most of the other sites, but what I liked was that they were very clear about the pot size you needed for each plant and then they also had the right pots to fit in!
Gosh, I can’t tell you how many hours I wasted a few years ago buying plants from a local place and then not being able to find the right pots. I ended up buying them online and then kept getting the wrong sizes. And these things are heavy – you don’t want to pay for returns on a 25cm concrete pot, I can tell you that for free. So you end up keeping them all and then you have to buy more plants to accommodate them and before you know it the inside of your kitchen looks like Kew Gardens and your walls are covered in weird aphids and you have creeping vines going through the units and curls around the doorknobs.
Anyway. I thought the ease of matching a plant to a pot in Hortology was great. I know some other sites do this, but I’ve never been very impressed with the look of the pots before. It always seemed to be a simple offering, whereas Hortology had lots and lots of different shapes, styles and colors.
Most of which, I must say, were right up my alley.
I ordered two ‘Blue Columnar Cacti’ and an aloe vera plant, which actually needs to be repotted from its new home already because it shouldn’t be in direct sunlight. Obviously. (“Oh, you don’t like these conditions, huh? Too much sun for you here, huh? Get used to it, kid. It’s survival of the fittest.”)
I then ordered three pots – two ‘earthen cement’, which are very sturdy and heavy and gray and then one called ‘Alice’ which looks like a supermarket crème caramel or an old French jelly mould. I love it.
I placed my order on Monday and received free delivery on Thursday, which was fast enough for me. I don’t think there was an option for faster delivery, but I can’t imagine a situation where you would desperately need a cactus or cheese plant for the very next day…
Wow, my imagination is running wild on this one.
If you want £5 off your first order, use it link here* – it’s not a special affiliate code, they just give it to you when you sign up, but I get some reward points in return. Feel free to ask your friends and family if they have a code before using mine, it’s there if you need it.
*as usual, exaggerating for comedic effect. The plants are doing well. Most of the time. I mean keeping cacti alive for fifteen years and after about seven house moves has got to be worth something, right? He doesn’t have it?
