Hi, I'm far from being a pro at this but I live in the Bay Area and have the same temp drops sometimes. I was told to pull the plants in when temps drop to the low 40s but the nursery in Hawaii where I shipped one home from said to pull them in below the 50s! So far they have withstood a few low 40s nights but I don't have any flowers yet. Three of mine are rooted and 5 are cuttings I started in late June. I do have buds on one of the rooted plants, but because of the fog layer in the morning and not a whole lot of heat this summer (I'm assuming here) they are yet to bloom. And the two I bought at a local nursery here have spider mites too. Wrinkled leaves and little webs, etc. I have sprayed them once and will spray them again a week later with a mild insecticidal soap (made for all kinds of plants including veggies). I have also been spraying them with water under the leaves, but it's no jet spray, just set on shower. Hope this helps, someone more knowledgeable may come along and say something completely opposite, but this seems to be working so far anyway. Good luck, Leslie

Yeah, that's what I thought, but that option only appears in the dialogue boxes on replies; it's not available in the original post that starts a thread (I can edit this post, but not the 1st one). Go figure. I should probably mention that in the thread someone had started about things we'd like to see changed in the Houzz forum. For anyone curious about spider mite lifecycle and what to do or NOT do to eradicate them, here are a couple of good sources: http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7405.html http://www.magicactus.com/red_spider.html

@Polypom @Rina Thanks for giving me a hint for the species, as well as sharing the pics of your plants! You're right, mine have no spines nor prickly parts whatsoever, and they aren't near as thick or rigid as yours look. I had never seen this type of plant, and only bought it because I thought it was neat. Maybe I bought the genetically inferior result of some mad botanist's cross-breeding experiments? :-x As for sunlight and etiolation, I honestly don't think that's it because I've been growing my A. Subulata in the same conditions as my other succulents, same July - October sunlight on my back porch. In fact, they were all sitting in a row on the same porch railing throughout most of this. I typically use the "finger dipstick" test to determine when I should water, but I've kept these plants dry for the most part. Maybe they get watered once every 6 - 10 days at most? The plants pictured below in the black plastic containers are the ones I bought at the same time from the flea market lady (this was dated 7/18/2015), with the baby A. Subulata in the middle. It's a blurry camera pic, but I'm pretty sure I had 5 - 6 of the plants in that pot when I started. ...and these are those same plants now, with the little black container for reference. I'm pretty sure I used the same Miracle Gro "Cactus, Palm, & Citrus potting mix", for these, but it's possible I cut it with Fox Farms Ocean Forest potting soil (I probably did for the big cactus just due to the size of the pot). I know that's not ideal for a desert plant, but surely poor drainage / incorrect perlite mixture would have made my babies pictured above look like this sickly baby pictured below! Maybe A. Subulata is more finicky or sensitive to something in this N.C. weather? I repotted all of those flea market plants the day after I bought them...I didn't know that A. Subulata was many plants, so I was surprised when they all came apart in my hand when I pulled them out. One of the A.Subs died within a couple of weeks of me re-potting, but I chalked that up to my novice plant-handling skills. The others held on, but then started doing the "loch ness monster" dip/grow back up/dip more/grow up/die cycle since maybe late August or so?. That's why I suspected disease or pests, just because it took so long for them to start declining...but maybe they hated that soil, and it's just taken them this long to say "I give up" and die? @Asclepiad_Fan I didn't see what my mom did with it on a day-to-day basis when she owned it, but it always stayed in a pot either on the back porch (wooden, 2nd story off of the ground) or inside in a window sill in the winter. Honestly, it's always had some form of scarring and it's only gotten worst as time went on (summer or indoors!). Anyways, here's some pics in bright sunlight (maybe it will show something that my previous rainy-day pics don't?) This is the front, where there is less scarring visible: This is the back, which looks worse: And here is a close-up of the off-shoot: even its base is showing that same scarring! Not sure if it matters, but this guy has always had more spider webs on it since I assumed ownership and re-potted it. Some mornings, I would see one - two threads on the other succulents, but this guy has always consistently more inside of his pot compared to the other porch-rail succulents. Is it because it's a bigger pot / firm spines make better anchor points and the spiders look for that? Or, maybe I do have some spider-mite like pest? It sure looks like something has been sucking this poor dude dry his whole life...

Any organic fertilizer that has relatively whole ingredients like blood meal, bone meal, etc. will not work well in containers in most cases. These kinds of fertilizers work well in the ground because they rely on soil microorganisms to convert the raw ingredients into NPK. Unfortunately most container mixes do not have enough of those microorganisms to do the converting and so the fertilizer just stays as it is, raw materials. Your plant will literally starve while food sits there. Btw, fish emulsion is in this category. It's the Foliage Pro that's working not the fish emulsion. As the end product the soil microbes produce from the organic fertilizers is chemically the same as standard fertilizers, and since container mixes don't contain the necessary microbes, it's best to just use the standard or "chemical" fertilizers and bypass the missing microbe middlemen. If you're afraid of "burning" with chemical (standard) fertilizers, just cut the label dosage in half and you'll be fine. That's the popular "Weakly, weekly" method and it works well. But always make sure your soil is moist before feeding. Water the day before and the next day fertilize. Fertilizing a dry plant will burn it in most cases. Some of the good benefits of organic fertilizers are that they encourage more soil microbes in the ground and are also good for the texture of the soil. But it just doesn't work like that in container soil. So just use a standard fertilizer for containers and don't feel bad or guilty about it. But also make sure it's a standard fertilizer that is formulated for container soil mix. Most liquid fertilizes are good.Also fertilizers that are a powder meant to be mixed with water first will work. Standard granular fertilizers that are not mixed with water first are meant to be used on the ground, so don't use them.