Dave, I'm sure the Society would like you as a member and a vendor - there's certainly a place for someone selling succulent-garden starter plants that are grown well and bug-free. It's interesting that you also are growing Cistanthe guadalupensis - that's a great plant for the SouCal growing area and is underrepresented in San Diego gardens (Bonus! - Cistanthe-member plants are commonly known as 'pussypaws'). Coincidentally enough, there was a show last night on folks who dive with sharks - one of the best places to see great white sharks is off Guadalupe Island, which is where C.g. comes from (it and a few islets). They were diving from a boat, so my posting here is coming full-circle with your most-recent picture. Speaking of pictures, if you're judiciously posting off-topic pics (and large ones at that), you might want to put just a thumbnail up in the post, rather than the whole picture. Some folks here are on dial-up.

"I was planing on growing it in a pot ... with a green house in the winter ..." "Because for my cactus soil i get cheap soil from lowes or homedepot throw in a bunch of prelite and rocks and a bit of food ... should that be fine?" Yeah, you definitely need to do some reading. : p Perlite and rocks will improve a fine soggy soil simply by leaving less space in the pot for water to occupy, but it's only marginally better than deliberately underpotting the plant. Long story short, any potting medium that forces a plant to drink or drown is bad, and most succulents will end up drowning. Might I ask which sorts of cactus you have at the moment? Some of them take bad soil better than others. I would recommend reading through as many of the 'gritty mix' topics as possible (more than once, and at intervals. There's a lot to take in), and also the one about growing trees in containers. The latter is less immediately applicable because cacti don't need aggressive rootwork to survive in a container, but it does explain the importance of roots to a plant's overall health. If a plant has weak roots, it's less able to deal with environmental stresses and pests. If one of these stressors finally overwhelms the plant, the blame will fall there and not with the plant itself even if it was the only one for miles around that succumbed.

As someone whose motto is DEATH TO ALL SPIDERS, I understand your feelings. Before anyone jumps on me about how they are beneficial insects, I'd like to say that I know that already and even if I killed 20 spiders a day, that wouldn't be even a teeny, tiny dent in the population of them in even one small area of my yard. And I DO NOT want them in my house. I figure they are there anyway, I just don't see them, but I am not going to deliberately bring any in if I can help it! Warning to fans of arachnids: real spiders were harmed in the following account. I was wondering about this very problem of bringing critters indoors with the plants as this is the second summer that I have been putting my plants outdoors. Just this week I was picking some yellowed leaves off of one of my hoyas and I saw that one of those creepy really fast moving spiders had set up a web under some of the leaves. Of course I tried to catapult him out of the pot with a stick, but he very quickly hid from me - (shudder, shudder...nothing worse than when you know one is hiding from you) I grabbed the closest weapon at hand, which was a bottle of insecticidal soap, and drenched the area where I figured he was. A few moments later he crawled out of his hiding space and guess what! He wasn't moving so fast anymore! Moral of this story: Insecticidal soap, which is one of the safest things you can use on your plants, kills spiders. The only thing is that I do not know if it can be used on succulents - though you could probably spray the soil around them. I'd check into it before taking any chances.

Here is a thread I posted in Winter, when I took many cuttings: PROPAGATING SUCCULENTS. Many others shared their experience and posted photos of heir cuttings too. Check posts by dates if available, when cuttings were taken. I am not saying that is 'the best time' or that any succulent will grow/propagate same, but if they are not dormant, I think most will. Temps you have right now are what I get in late Spring/early Summer here -:( I keep plants under lights during winter, not so much for extra heat but for light. I usually leave new cuttings just in typical light coming thru the windows for a while, but after about 1 or 2 weeks move them under lights. They usually start growing roots by then. If propagating in Summer, I keep them in shade for a while too - often even inside, likely bit longer if it is quite warm. (ETA: added few words to hopefully clarify what I posted....)