Silly I was having the cactus sale. Thats where I get my Christmas $$$$

Xuan, I'm so glad to hear that you enjoyed the show and sale. We have it every year at the same time (4th weekend in July) so if you get back this way again come and see us. If you come back in a different month send me an email and I'll let you know what other C&S sales are going on. We have nine C&S societies here in Northern California, and there are shows/sales almost every month from April through October. Now I know what you meant about changing the soil. I have purchased plants from certain vendors before and if I didn't change the soil they would die. It had nothing to do with the quality of the vendor's soil; it had everything to do with the differences (however slight) in our climates. Since you're taking the plants back to Vietnam I would repot when I got home. This is because of your high humidity if nothing else. I would add more rock, perlite or pumice to the mix. I would also NOT move the plants into terra cotta pots since the plastic pots dry out faster and that's what you want, especially for Vietnam. Once you've learned how to grow them in your climate you could adjust the pots and/or soil to that which works best for you. I think you will find that you WILL have to water on occasion. Also, many succulents like having filtered light; others need to stay out of the afternoon sun. I don't know where you're staying, but there are a couple of places in Berkeley where you can buy more succulents - The Dry Garden on Shattuck Avenue and the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden on Centennial Drive (http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/). Of course our home improvement stores also have succulents at reasonable prices although many times they don't have names on them. If there's a Home Depot (http://www.homedepot.com) or a Lowe's (http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=home) near where you're staying you could check them out too. Good luck, and have a very safe trip home! Marilyn

Make sure you get the permits! Even if you planted it yourself, you still need permits to move Saguaro's in AZ. Good luck finding a buyer! (Commercial posts aren't allowed on this forum, so this message won't last long. Its really too bad since I'm sure you aren't running a business, and it would be nice for your plant to go to someone who will really enjoy it.)

Aztcqn, that's beautiful! Thank you for sharing that picture! I appreciate the first-hand care tips. I checked it today and it's in a very coarse, very dry grit-mix, so I'm probably not going to repot it for a while. It will definitely get and stay nice and dry here. When you water yours, do you fully wet it allowing water to drain out the bottom? water it from below? Spritz it? So looking forward to life with this cactus. Maryl, there are great posts on here about the gritty mix. Just do a search on Al's Gritty Mix. He's famous. :-) In case he reads this post, "Thanks, Al, for making my plants a lot happier!" I got my Repti-bark at Petsmart. I got the granite chips at Tractor Supply. I got the medium perlite at my local independent nursery. I got the clay bits from the auto-parts store, a product used to soak up oil in driveways. No, I bring everything in about mid-October. I have a small greenhouse, so some go in there; some go in a spare room on plant racks with artificial lights to supplement window light; and some go out in the barn with an LED plant-specturm light over them. I think I watered the C&S about twice all winter. Everything survived just fine.