I would take apart that branch and start a new pot. The main plant probably needs to be repotted. Clean out as much as the old potting mix you can, trim the roots a bit and put it in a new fast draining mix. You can search 5-1-1 mix here and repotting. There are lots of explanations. If you are on Facebook there is a group called Holiday Cactus Lovers group with lots of helpful people. Most of them prefer to repot using a fifty fifty mix of potting soil and perlite. If you repot, tale your time and read up here. I'm happy to answer specific questions if you need it. My weekend will be busy so it might take a bit before I respond. If the clades on the fallen branch are withered, sometimes they can be saved by putting them i a ziplock baggie full of water for a day or two. Just flip the bag every day. I actually forgot about one for about two weeks and it had sprouted roots. Good luck!

Here is my haul for the year minus the 3 in the pic last week. There are a few more small ones that I'm leaving on the vines until Wednesday. The biggest ones aren't easy to see. They aren't gigantic, but still pretty heavy to move around. The one on the bottom right is the one that fell. It didn't rot, but it never got a chance to "peanut" up. LCarlonine: glad your sales picked up and it's a good thing you have all that help from your little ones :-) I can't imagine how tired I'd be if I had to harvest all of yours. And I had to laugh at your post about trying to see the pumpkin growing in the compost pile. There was just a thread about a month ago on the Cactus forum about someone seeing a different kind of Agave growing and he had to turn around to get a better look. Turned out that it was made of metal. Then I was really laughing when I saw the same metal agaves for sale at my local grocery store that same weekend. The year I got my 100# pumpkin (pretty good for the hi desert). My neighbor spotted it from a field away and had to come to see what that big yellow thing was. He didn't believe that it was a pumpkin. This post was edited by notolover on Sat, Sep 20, 14 at 20:01

For most of zone 7 the growing season ends around the 1st of november to the 15 of november. Good thing about living along the coast is frost comes pretty late in the fall because the sea temperatures are still fairly warm from the summer The northeast and mid atlantic should watch out on friday morning though, because many areas will be getting a hard frost, that includes NYC, philly, and maybe DC, (as well as all the coastal areas which are the few areas that havent gotten a frost yeton the eastern seabord). Also those spike plants are very close relatives to ti plants. Spike plants are also known as Cabbage trees and can grow really large (and look quite tropical too). They are cold tolerant to 10F making them zone 8 plants, but Ive seen a some survive zone 7 winters in pots. I saw someone near me planted them in the ground and they survived three winters with no protection at all and were in very exposed areas. They got to be almost 4 feet tall, and if they were protected that one cold night, they would probably still be alive today. Good luck.

Justmetoo actually said it better than I could. I know & I have thought about how drama follows me & have wondered how that is. I LOVED the peace and quiet the entire week SD was gone... a boring life with no drama. I enjoyed the Easter party... even though I was surprised to see my son show up with DIL when he told me he was going out of town the day before. (Again, it felt like they are sneaking behind my back) I know it must be things I do that cause drama to follow me. If I had more time, I would figure it out... I may go back into counseling because I do agree with that. Just for the record.. no, I don't support them being together. I support them both having a relationship with their son ~ separately. They are horrible for each other and if they get together, I'm more likely to have DGS LONGER or forever. Their "marriage" happened because she broke up with him & he decided to "prove" his love for her by taking her in the middle of the night and marrying her. I got countless calls from him in the middle of the night to come get him, she threw him out at the beginning of the marriage. Then calls telling me not to come get him when I was in my car. Finally, after a couple of times, I told him he's married to her & work it out yourself when he called. She was hitting him. He did not want to leave. Within a couple of months, he told me she was pregnant and he had joined the Army. He came to see me one day after they had a fight. She called him repeatedly, telling him that she was going to abort DGS & he would do whatever she said. Just recently, he told me that she really wanted to abort their son but he insisted she continue the pregnancy. He says it was HER idea for him to join the military, not his. Then she used it against him and was angry that he "left" her. While she was pregnant, I took her to birthing classes... trying to be helpful & get along with her since she is going to be my DIL. The question came up, "what do you hope to get from the class?" and she answered, "get this out of me!" referring to the baby. She never rubbed her tummy & showed any excitement like most pregnant ladies and they moved into my house just before he was born because they were planning to move to Georgia. Her parents wanted nothing to do with it. He took her and DGS (just after he was born) to Georgia before he was deployed for 6 months. During that six months, there were several incidents of domestic violence, MP's arrested her & he was disciplined for her behavior. DGS was taken to the ER three times for "falling" when he wasn't even rolling over yet. They destroyed a moving truck when he moved her back just before his deployment (because the military kicked her off and banned her from the base). The truck's transmission was gone... I can only assume she grabbed the gear shift while he was driving. She used to have emotional outbursts over anything... and she has never been "loving" toward my son. They stayed with me for a week before he had to fly back to be deployed. We were going to look for housing for her. She beat him up (put nail marks across his face on one incident that he didn't report) but on Halloween, she got upset with him & started beating on him while he was driving. They had DGS in the car & witnesses called police. She was arrested. A few days later, she was out & they talked before he left. He insisted on her going to the airport so I agreed. After we dropped my son at the airport & returned to my house, where her car was... she told me to keep DGS so she can go look for a house on her own. I didn't see her for days. Weeks passed & I still had DGS so I found an apartment for her (because she said she couldn't take DGS until she had a place to take him) but even after she had the apartment, she left him with me. She had him a day or night here and there. On one of the night visits, she had brought home a guy & at some point during the night she left the apartment (either drunk or got drunk), rolled her car into a ditch and was arrested. She did not tell police she had a baby in her apartment with some guy she met. Fortunately, the guy called some of her friends to come stay with the baby so he could leave and I found out the next day that she was in jail & I went to get the baby. That's how I ended up with Guardianship. She has gotten better with DGS, the older he is but there is no real bond and she doesn't seem to mind the lack of bond. My son does. He wants a bond to exist but I believe it's his lack of maturity to think it's automatic... and doesn't seem to have a desire to put in any time toward it. But, DIL has so many problems... she has been in rehab so many times, she is bi polar, and she recently was diagnosed with an eating disorder.. which is why she had a meltdown over the cake pop. And the only thing I can say is that I made the cake pops because DGS asked me to and he loves them... and I didn't think it was fair for anyone to say no cake pop as they are being handed out to the rest of the kids. Would it kill him? no. Would he get over it? sure. But, the basket of candy he ate.. DIL unwrapped for him and sat with him as he ate didn't seem to bother her. It wasn't out of concern for his health... maybe a power struggle or an unrealistic fear because of her eating disorder and mental illness. Rational parents know a cake pop (not even two bites of cake) is going to cause a disease like diabetes. When she threw the fit, I did not respond to it... other parents seemed to ignore it & walk away. It wasn't given any energy and she ran to her car where my son followed to console her. The questions I posed were because I WANT to include them in events but I do not want to have her outbursts... jeez, one year she started crying hysterically when my son got a plate of food at Thanksgiving. She has mental issues & I get that, but I don't want to walk on eggshells when I plan an event. I got tired of SD causing drama with her grandma and the grief it cause me, so I don't have parties when SD is here anymore. No SD, no drama. With DIL, it's only events that are focused on DGS but those are events that also include kids he's in daycare with & their parents that I know. It's embarrassing. DIL may or may not have a meltdown at any given time over any given thing, which is why I backed off at the birthday party. I realize now that it was a mistake but it was also the first thing she's been to for him. I let lots go & roll off my back to keep the peace for DGS. DIL has given me lots of reasons to want nothing to do with her.. but I have let so much go. As JMT said, they are welcome to plan things for him but they barely spend time with him.. and yes, it bothers me to have my son live less than a mile from my work & not see his son more than a few hours a week. He came over last night & saw him for a couple of hours. Yet, he will drive three hours to see his wife.. and a little more insight into their "marriage". All the time he was gone in the military, there were guys in & out. One of her friends told me she was prostituting from the apartment. He had a girlfriend in Georgia that he dumped the day he moved back here. This "reconcilliation" came out of left field for me, when I envisioned my son coming back & being a dad to his son. DIL told me she wanted nothing to do with him and from the outside perspective, she appears to be torturing him... acts like they are reconcilling and then dumps him. She's done it several times in the last few weeks and he has been very emotional, depressed and suicidal. Then they get back & he's happy. IMO, she's playing games with him. She has emotional detachment problems (I think based on her childhood) and them being together is bad... not ever going to be good for DGS. (unless she deals with her mental issues and he grows up!)