SACXS FACTS
NEWSLETTER FOR THE SAN ANTONIO CACTUS
AND XEROPHYTE SOCIETY
January 2015
VOLUME 27, NUMBER 1
THE SAN ANTONIO CACTUS AND XEROPHYTE SOCIETY WAS ORGANIZED IN 1977. ITS MISSION IS TO
PROMOTE THE STUDY, PROPAGATION, AND PUBLIC AWARENESS OF CACTI AND OTHER SUCCULENT PLANTS.
SACXS President’s Message
Welcome to a new year. So far Winter has been mostly cloudy and relatively mild. I see great improvements in all the succulents within my
gardens. They love the cool weather and the moist soils has them
puffing up. Do you look at the health of your plants?
The same succulents that I grow look less happy in the hot of August. I
acidify my water once-in-a-while in summer, and that seems to help
the plants that get wilted. Regular hose water is alkaline and does not improve my
agaves and my sedums/soft succulents as well. Rain water is slightly acidic, so I catch
as much as I can, and use that to water inside my greenhouses. The things we gardeners do all for the joy of our hobby.
Continued on page
SACXS Board Members
President: Marty Ruona [email protected]
First ViceVice-President: Joey Gutierrez [email protected]
Second ViceVice-President: Grace Fry [email protected]
Third ViceVice-President: Claude Townsend [email protected]
Recording Secretary: Debbie Braly [email protected]
Publicity Secretary: Alice Knight [email protected]
Treasurer: Don Clark [email protected]
SAGC Liaison: Sidney Yarbrough [email protected]
Directors: Linda Draper [email protected]
Bill Fry [email protected]
Barbara Schulze [email protected]
Librarian: Paul Kibler [email protected]
SACXS FACTS Editor: Linda Draper [email protected]
Table of Contents
Page 1
President’s Message
Page 2
January Program
Page 3
Assignments
Page 4
Christmas Party
Page 5
Christmas Party Decorations
Page 6
Potting Mixes Simplified
Page 7
Potting Mixes cont’d/New Members
Page 8
Show News
Page 9
Program Line Up/ Library
Page 10
Garden Center News
Visit our website: www.sacxs.org
SACXS FACTS Vol. 27, #1
Page 1
SACXS January 21, 2015 Program
Cooking with Cactus
Eva Schmidt and other club members will bring some of their favorite foods, all made
using native cactus or prickly pear juice. From jams and jellies, to cheesecake, and
syrups. Nopal recipes will be introduced also.
If you have a recipe you want to share
will add you to the program.
contact one of the Board members and we
This program is free and open to the public.
6:30 Pm—9:00pm
San Antonio Garden Center
3310 N New Braunfels Ave.
SACXS President’s Message, cont’d.
There are still a few motel rooms available for our club trip to Big Bend the last weekend of March. Think about joining fellow cactus & succulent enthusiasts looking at our
favorite plants in their native habitat. If you have never been to Big Bend, springtime is
some of the best weather, and we hope to see many
plants in bloom. We would love to have you join us.
Enjoy these cool and mild temps. Before you know it,
Winter will be over. Heck, that could be as soon as six or
eights weeks away!
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Refreshment Assignments:
Debbie Braly
[email protected]
Don & Jeannie Clark
[email protected]
Doug Coates
[email protected]
Dave & Marleen Crucq
[email protected]
Gary & Lana Daniel
[email protected]
Each person will be contacted by Marleen Crucq,
Refreshments Coordinator. If you are unable to attend the
meeting and bring refreshments, please consider
donating $5 or more so something can be purchased as a
substitute.
Please consider signing up to be part of the refreshments committee. See
Marleen Crucq or Sidney Yarbrough if you’d like to help.
Refreshments only happen when people volunteer and share the responsibility.
Auction Plant Assignments:
Denise Jones
[email protected]
Glen & Ann Jones
[email protected]
Paul & Elisa Kibler
[email protected]
Bob Klebe
[email protected]
Mary Kneupper
[email protected]
Note: Typically members donate a plant or plants worth at least
$5. If unable to bring a plant to the meeting, please consider making a $5 cash
donation. Our auction proceeds go
toward covering the building rental for our
meetings.
RAFFLES
Each meeting we sell raffle tickets on plants, seeds, cuttings etc. that our
members bring in and donate. It’s fun to add to your collection this way at
a low cost and help support your club. Please bring something to share!
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SACXS Christmas Party
Our Annual Christmas party was held December 17, 2014 at the Garden Center.
There were about 40 people attending, including 5 guests.
The club furnished the meat entrée and members filled in with all the trimmings.
Thanks to Marleen Crucq for coordinating the meal.
Grace Fry, Debbie Braly and Sidney Yarbrough along with Marleen were the party
committee ably assisted by Bill Fry, Dave Crucq and Jerry Yarbrough. Thanks for all
the great work.
The table decorations and favors were made by Debbie’s special ed students (another
article p. )
We made $214 on the silent auction of purchased and donated items. And another
$82 on the raffle..
Thanks to all who worked on making the party a success and to all who donated to
the silent auction and raffle.
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Party Decorations and Favors
The table centerpieces and party favor boxes for our Christmas party were created by
Debbie Braly’s students at The Nellie Reddix Center in the Northside Independent
School District., a vocational transition school for students with disabilities.
Here are some pictures Debbie took of the work in progress.
Thank you, Nellie Reddix Center Students!
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Simplified Potting Mixes
By Bob Stewart
Potting mix is a frequent topic of discussion among all of our members. I saw the following
article in The Offset, the newsletter for the Central Oklahoma Cactus and Succulent Society.
The author, Bob Stewart, editor of the Eastern Spine, a newsletter of the National Capital Cactus and Succulent Society, graciously agreed to my request to publish it in our newsletter.
There is a bewildering number of potting mixes for succulent plants. Is it necessary to have a
half dozen or more components in a successful mix? Can succulent potting mixes be simplified? I have long heard that a potting mix for succulent plants must be well aerated and well
drained. My experience in growing succulents for 30+ years agrees with that tenet. However,
when you do a little research you find a myriad of recipes for concocting the ideal mix. Within
a short time, you end up with bags and bags of potting mix components, all absolutely necessary to create the ideal potting mix. I have actually had fun over the years using my potting
mix materials as a master chef
might, adding a little of this and a lot of that. Are complicated recipes, with dozens of ingredients really necessary to produce a successful potting mix for succulent plants? Probably not.
The potting mix is the domain of the plant's root system and the root system has three critical
needs, air, water, and a collection of essential elements we'll call nutrients. The physical structure of the potting medium determines the amounts of air and water present. If the potting
medium is very coarse, water will rapidly drain out of the spaces between the mineral particles and be replaced by air. Such a medium will have plenty of air available to the roots, but
often insufficient
water.
If the potting medium is fine and the spaces between mineral particles small, water will drain
out slowly and there will be little air. Without sufficient air roots will die and the plant will fail.
Nutrients, in the form of fertilizer, can be added to any potting media
but the potting media must have the ability to absorb and hold onto
the nutrients. Otherwise, the nutrients will be rapidly flushed out during watering. Adequate
air, water, and nutrient holding capacity are the three characteristics we need in a successful
succulent potting media. Of these three, problems with adequate aeration is the most difficult
to deal with after a plant has been potted. We can add additional water. We can add additional nutrients, but there is no way to add additional air.
Continued on the next page
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Simplified Potting Mixes, cont’d
A successful potting mix must supply adequate air from the start. With adequate air as a
prerequisite, I once considered gravel as a stand alone potting medium. I noticed that if there
was regular rainfall, weeds grew very nicely in my gravel driveway. But, gravel dries out so
quickly and holds nutrients so poorly, I would need to water and fertilize almost daily. A better choice than gravel might be pumice. This is a volcanic rock ground into pieces the size of
small gravel. It is light in weight, and has excellent aeration and drainage properties. Pumice
also holds moisture and nutrients longer, but
still dries out relatively fast. With pumice, my watering would be once a week rather than
every day. In fact, pumice is being used alone as a potting medium for succulents.
While pumice has been around for a while, there is a relatively new potting component that
can provide good aeration and drainage and holds moisture and nutrients even longer than
pumice. This new material is coir. This is a natural fiber extracted
from the husk of coconut. It looks a lot like sphagnum peat moss, but isn’t as acidic, and is
not hydrophobic. One of the problems with the sphagnum peat moss, which has been used
in potting mixes for many years, is that once it dries out, it is difficult for it to absorb water
again. Dry sphagnum peat repels water. This is a problem when it’s used in a potting mix for
succulent plants since we are told to allow the potting medium to dry out between waterings. Plus, sphagnum peat is very acidic, which reduces the availability of nutrients. Coir has a
near neutral pH and is not hydrophobic. Coir also absorbs and holds both water and nutrients while maintaining good aeration and drainage qualities. Coir is becoming the preferred
replacement for sphagnum peat moss in
potting mixes.
A year ago, I potted two Haworthia truncata plants using a potting medium of pure pumice.
Both are growing well. I water them once a week and fertilize them once a month. I believe
you can grow most succulent plants successfully in pure pumice. I am going to plant two additional Haworthias using pure coir as the potting medium and compare their growth with
those in the pumice.
Hopefully, simplification of a potting mix for succulents will help all growers, but
growers new to the world of succulent plants.
especially
Welcome New Members
Our club is growing. We have recently added the following new
members:
Dennis and Melody Frazee
We look forward to seeing them at upcoming meetings. Please seek them out and introduce yourself . It’s great to meet others who love gardening with our cacti and succulents too.
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Show News
Barbara Schulze, 2015 SACXS Show & Sale Chairman
We’ve turned the corner into a new year and it is time to really get serious about our
2015 Show & Sale preparations. The Show committee can really use your help to
“Grow Our Show” into an even bigger and better event. I know it takes time and
energy but that kind of commitment should be an expectation of every member.
These are the tasks that all members can help with:
1. Volunteer to serve as a co-chair such as advertising, educational displays, club
table, raffle & auction, etc. You can start off as an apprentice – we’ll help you!
2. If you can’t take on a big responsibility, then be ready to volunteer for the set-up,
clean-up, or daily tasks that need to be accomplished each day of the Show & Sale.
We will have a time set aside during one of our up-coming regular meetings to
explain the tasks and sign-up volunteers.
3. Start thinking about donations of plants or plant related items for our silent auction
(2 days this year) and our raffle. These events brought in a huge portion of our profits
last year.
4. Make a small monetary donation each month to build up our Auction Plant purchasing power. There will be a container at each regular meeting for that purpose.
5. Save small boxes to give to Show & Sale visitors to carry their raffle plants, auction
plants, and purchases in to make their visit more manageable.
6. Also, any suggestions that will benefit the organization of the Show & Sale are
welcome. Let us hear from you.
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Program Line-up
January 2015 — February 2015
01-21-15 General Meeting
At the Garden Center
6:30 to 9:00pm
Eva Schmidt and other club members will
bring some of their favorite foods, all made
using native cactus or prickly pear j u i c e .
From jams and jellies, to cheesecake, and
syrups. Nopal recipes will be introduced
also.
If you have a recipe you want to share
contact one of the Board members and we
will add you to the program.
02-18-15 General Meeting
At the Garden Center
6:30 to 9:00pm
Tentative We hope to see our friend, Woody
Minnich of Cactus Data Plants,. Woody presents
entertaining and educational slide shows from
his travels around the world.
Club Library
Some of you may not be aware of the fact that our club has an extensive library of books and
magazines dedicated to cacti and succulents.
A benefit of your membership is the use of this library. You can contact our Librarian, Paul
Kibler to check out a book or to find out if a particular book is in the library for check out. Paul
often brings a few selections to meetings, so look for him and see what he’s brought. There is
a lot of knowledge there for you.
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Garden Center News
Spring Floral Design Classes at the San Antonio Garden Center will be held Tuesday,
February 17, 24, and March 3, 2015 from 12n - 3pm. Tuition is $75 for the 3 classes.
Learn how to design your own floral arrangements in these hands-on classes with
Instructor Melissa White. Fresh flowers, greenery, container, and instruction for a
take-home finished project each week with emphasis on flowers and colors of spring.
Classes are held at the San Antonio Garden Center, 3310 N. New Braunfels. Further
information at www.sanantoniogardencenter.org or call (210) 824-9981. Registration
deadline is February 13, 2015. Make check payable to San Antonio Garden Center.
Tuition for missed classes cannot be refunded.
San Antonio Garden Center Clubs will meet on Wednesday, February 4, at 10 a.m. at
3310 N. New Braunfels @ Funston. A Valentine's program, "The Romance of Wrought
Iron," features San Antonio metalwork artist Christopher Voss, owner of Christopher
Voss 4th Generation Craftsman, Inc., who will talk about garden art and the blending
of passion with practicality. Join us for coffee at 9:30; meetings are free and open to
the public. For more information, go to www.sanantoniogardencenter.org or call
(210) 824-9981.
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