Last week I noticed a seed pod split open on my Astrophytum Ornatum - the seeds are hybrid, but I collected them, dried them on a kitchen towel for a few days, cleaned off the pod fibres, and decided to sow them. They might make some nice gift plants - Mrs Fly is always after any spare cacti I might have - to give away. There are about 200 seeds, and I have no idea what the other parent is at present. So I sterilised a mix of loam and sand, and sprinkled 100 of the seeds on top, covering them with bird grit. This was Monday evening.

This morning (Wednesday), just 36 hours after sowing, a handful had actually germinated - I couldn´t believe it - and certainly a record for me in 57 years of growing. Currently, Wednesday evening -about a dozen are up !!! I am gobsmacked with the speed of this !!

As i should be soon the happy owner of few cati seeds (PT & SP), do you have some advice about germination for a total noob.
Of course i gonna look for informations by myself but as you have a little bit of experience (<== euphemism) and you seem prone to share your knowledge, here i am .

And congrats for your babies !

Sure dansmatete. I don´t think the growing medium you use is terribly important for actual germination. In this case I was just throwing some stuff together for some freebie seeds - had I paid good money for them I would have been a bit more meticulous in preparing my usual desert cacti mix and sieving it fairly fine.

So a bit of loam got mixed 50/50 with some sand - a bit of nutrition and some grit for the roots to grab onto. I put it in a seed tray and sterilised it in a microwave - heated it until my meat thermometer showed 190F in the centre. Let it cool and sprinkled the seeds on top. Covered them with a coarser bird grit. Then I put the entire seed tray in a Ziploc bag, and under a 40W 6500K tube. I don´t think light affects actual germination, but as soon as a green bit appears I like it to get some light on it.

As I said this is my record time for quick germination. My Lophophora williamsii usually take about 10 to 14 days. Ariocarpus often a lot longer.

Going a bit past germination into care of the sprouts - I leave them in the Ziploc bag under lights until they start to look like miniatures of the adult plant - no longer blobs of green jelly. Then I reduce the humidity by gradually opening the bag, and finally removing it altogether - but still keep the sprouts fairly moist. Then they are gradually given more light outside, where they will eventually live. In total shade at first, then just a couple of hours of early morning sun, gradually increasing the sun until they are eventually in the sun all day. When they get a bit crowded lift them and put them in more spacious accommodation. They are soon flowering adults - job done!! Hope this helps.

Sure it helps, thanks.

Just to feed my curiosity and make me dream, how mani cacti do you grow (not only those with mescaline) ?

I have loads of L. williamsii, apart from those I try to grow as many plants as possible as are featured in Pilbeam & Weightman´s book, Ariocarpus et cetera.
These guys select possibly the choicest Mexican desert cacti, many (but not all) being regarded as difficult. So I have all of the Astrophytum genus, all of Ariocarpus, Aztekium, Epithelantha, Pelecyphora, Obregonia, Geohintonia, Leuchtenbergia, Strombocactus, , a lot of Stenocactus and Turbinicarpus. My latest acquisition - for which I paid a totally silly price at auction on evilBay, is a very rare Toumeya papyracantha. - and an even sillier price for a cristate form of that species!!!(Don´t tell Mrs. Fly!!!) OK I have limited space so have made my own arbitrary decision as to which genuses I collect - I have a fair few more species to go, though.
Regards
Fly

Sounds like you have quite a collection. Where do you find space for all of that? I would hang out in my garden all the time if I had such an array of wonderful plants.

They live outside on my roof terrace !!