Welcome to the Southampton & District Branch of the British Cactus and Succulent Society

Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday May 7thand this will be our annual Cultivation and Propagation Evening, where we aim to discuss a wide range of different topics relating to the hobby.

As usual we will begin with a general chat about how our plants fared during the winter months and whether or not we heat our greenhouses, whether we water any plants in the winter etc. Following on from Paul Spracklin's talk last month about growing our plants outdoors we will hear reports of how our plants coped with the cold and wet winter.

Richard will talk a bit about heating and lighting in the greenhouse, based on a recent article in the Alpine Garden Society bulletin.

Last year the Branch gave everyone a young plant of Crassula 'Silver Spark', and in 2022 we distributed plants of Rebutia perplexa, so please bring your plants along so we can see how the plants have fared in different conditions, and we might learn the secrets of those people who have had the most success so far. (Please remember to mark the label or pot of your plants with your initials, to avoid confusion at the end of the evening over which plant belongs to whom.)

Cath will be leading a chat about seed sowing and the aftercare of the young plants. If you have any seedlings, sown either this year or last year, please bring some of them along so everyone can see how interesting and absorbing this aspect of the hobby is. We hope also to chat a little about vegetative propagation, and Mike might massacre an Echeveria to generate a batch of leaf cuttings! If you have any examples of propagations from the last year or two, please consider bringing them along to show us.

Spring is a wonderful time in the greenhouse, so ask that you bring along a selection of your plants that are either in bud or flower at the time of the meeting. It is always lovely to see plants that are producing flowers, and we hope that we might see a good range of such plants, for everyone to admire, and for us to chat about.

Ben will be talking about composts and growing media, a subject close to our hearts, and also a little about which pesticides are available nowadays and which are the most effective. If you have discovered any good (or bad!) composts or pesticides please bring along samples to show our members.

As usual, if you have any unnamed plants please bring them along and we will see if we can identify them for you. Similarly, if you have plants that are causing you any problems in cultivation please bring them to the meeting and hopefully someone will have a suggestion to help you grow them better.

These evenings are generally very popular with our members, and we hope that our meeting next month will teach us all something new about our absorbing hobby. Please make a special effort to bring along the relevant plants etc discussed above, so that we have plenty of material to talk about.

The hall should be open for set up from soon after 7pm, and the meeting will formally start at 7.45pm.