Are you feeding it? Looks like enough light but growing too fast. You need to slow it down, stop food and use a poor(old) soil mix with more grit and less organic material. Also let the soil dry between waterings.

My plants grow so slow you see little or no new growth on the stems
{{gwi:688080}}

No feeding. It's in the pot I bought it in, and I haven't removed the top dressing or checked the soil yet, but I have bought alot of plants from this vendor, and am familiar with his soil composition. It's pretty gritty/heavily pumice/perlite based already. I'd rather not repot change soil until I definately have to. Where do you get "old soil" from anyway? :)

This is the dilemma with cactii/succulents I'm sure alot of people face. I want a nice large specimen plant eventually. But how do you get there? Is it better to grow slow from the get-go, or grow it fast, then slow it down later? I'm sure alot of that is species dependant.

Oh yeah, 1 more quick question. Do these guys like to be rootbound to fatten up their trunks?

If you are over driving your fluorescents, you probably know this already, but the plants need to be within an inch or two of the bulbs for them to get an appreciable amount of light. Those 40W fluorescents don't produce much light, and since the intensity falls as the distance squared, they become almost useless if more than a few inches away from the plants. If the bulbs are getting hot, than you obviously want to be careful not to cook your plants, but otherwise, closer is better!

Alternatively, you could invest in some HID lamps(like mercury vapor lamps) which produce a huge amount of light, and subsequently can be placed much farther away from the plants.

The one Tylecodon I have (can not remember species) is about 4-5 inches away from a 400W MH lamp......lots of air circualtion to dissipate heat and it seems to like it.....second winter with this regimen and still growing so I'll keep my fingers crossed!!

The question about hurry up and then slow down is a good one though......seems like it would work for something like this or a Cyphostemma juttae since as soon as you put the brakes on and grow them hard wouldn't they start to develop the nice "bark" texture that you want?? Not for a cacti, but how about these sorts of plants??

Looks like you have a lot of plants under those lights :o) Dan

Caudex 1 Really great advice, now I'll read the rest of them. Your plant looks like the ones I saw in Africa. Nicely done.
These were very large plants that I saw, any plant can become etiolated with low light, too much water, too much of every thing. Great responses. Tylecoden seem like slow growers to me, and that is the way I like them. Norma

I forgot to mention they are 4ft tubes. The 3 fixtures have 2 tubes each. I have them over a 4ft x 2.5ft table. mylar "walls" all around. It's hard to get all plants on the table as close to the lights as possible, since they are all varying heights. But I try to place some plants on upside down pots to raise them up, and they are aligned by height, and the fixtures are also staggered height-wise to optimize closeness. Most are in trays so I can easily move them around during watering.

I took temperature measurements with an IR digital point-n-shoot thermometer. I bought it for taking temps of my car's engine, but it also is useful for my succulent hobby :-D Ballasts get about 104degF. The bulbs about 80degF, and the bottom of the table 72degF. So i think i'm safe.

This is the first year I'm doing a dedicated grow-light setup for winter. Want to make sure I'm doing it as well as possible. Last year I did the "overcrowded windowsills method" with mixed results. But the wife and cat's don't like crowded windowsills too much :)

Usually when you try to speed up growth with most succulents via extra fertilizer and watering, you end up with tall and lanky growth - depending on what you're dealing with, it may or may not fatten up later on a lean diet.

You're better off growing slow and fat from the beginning. Something like Adenium you can encourage fast growth with lots of nutrients when the plants are young, but I can't think of too many other species that would respond well to this.

x

Old soil is what I remove from the plant when I repot, never through it out unless I have a mealy infestation or something.

I have the best success fattening these up by restricting the roots. It's a slow process but the results are worth it. What happens when the plant is root bound it can not store water there so it increases girth to store moisture in the body of the plant. Since the plant thinks there's a drought it only produces foliage on the growing tips, again to conserve moisture.

I'll post a photo example of a seedling I purchased in Feb of this year once the sun comes up.

When I bought this it was the runt of the litter, all the other seedlings were tall and thin. Feb 2008
{{gwi:688081}}

After I took the photo I removed it from the 3.5in pot and put into a 2in. This is it today, Oct 2008
{{gwi:688083}}

curious,
Notice the leaf node spacing of a slow grown plant
{{gwi:688084}}

yes, very tight and no spacing.

but you didn't ever chime in on if you think it's OK to grow them fast at first, till they gain some size, then slow and hard for the nice look. or will they be too lanky? then you can take cutting, yes?

i think you posted a pic recently of one of your plants you just staged. a t. paniculatus that has a strange spread out form. thoughts?

ah yes, found the pic in your winter grower thread:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45615616@N00/2996209586/

that big guy (not the sedum oxypetalum) on the left. looks lanky. different. am i correct that it is a t. paniculatus? you could take 6 cuttings from the lanky growth, and what is left will be a more compact form, that will look more typical with time and hard/slow growth...

Hey! that guy is me :o)

{{gwi:688086}}

I bought this plant as a weak spindly over grown in the shade specimen, and picked it cause it was cheap. I was going to gut it up but then got this idea, bonsai! It has probably tripled it's girth in the 3yrs I've had it.

Here's another one, was stick when I got it. Has gotten significantly fatter under my care.
{{gwi:688088}}

Sure it can be done, but I would rather have a squat fat plant than tall thick stemmed one.

Pruned this one the other day, it was badly etiolated.

{{gwi:688090}}

{{gwi:688092}}

is that t. hallii? sell me some cutting please :)

i guess from pics of tylecodons i have seen, i like huge plants with itty bitty growth points.

a technique in bonsai is to grow the plant as big/tall as possible, then "whack" it waaay back. this way the trunk fattens up, and then you reduce height drastically later...

and you are left with cuttings too! :)

Sorry, too big hallii. It's paniculatus var. dinterii. Got from a garage sale last year for $2

You can do the bonsai thing with Tylecodon, but personally I don't like the look of the cuts. Sure in time it won't be as noticeable but it will look like it was cut.

With the plant I cut I sprayed the tips with dust away, it's aerosol to clean computers. After you spray it for 10sec it extremely cold and it freezes the tissues. I want to see if it will produce a naturally occurring scar. Only time will tell....

interesting technique. i am familiar with that product. it's like winter freezing in a can. i'm also interested to hear how it goes...

you also can make more angular cuts, to "taper" the trunk, as it were...

i remember pics of it being done to a cyphostemma somewhere....

what about burning the cuts? with a lighter? just an idea.

Cyphostemma is completely different, doesn't mater how it's cut in a few yours you'll never know. I cut mine every year.

I angle the cuts so they are not so noticeable from the front of the plant. I'll keep every posted on how the freezing goes.
That 1st paniculatus I posted froze about 10yrs ago, you can see evidence of it at the center of the plant.

I do most of my "experiments" on plants I don't mind losing as much. Ficus, some various sedums, etc.