Hey guys can any one give me any tips or point me in the right direction. I am looking to place some in a heated room with lights through the winter but was told LED light (ment for MJ grow) might not work so good. Havent tried anything with these but letting them sit in the window so any info would really be appreciated!

If you have to bring your bridgesii inside for winter it's best just to let them rest. If it is a warm room, having them sit on a south-facing windowsill should keep them happy enough if you're at or below latitude 55° north. Only water them sparingly if they start to look wrinkled. My opinion here is that watering from below is better (into their saucers) because this favours better root development.

An experienced cactus gardener on youtube uses LEDs for some of her indoor cacti during the winter so presumably, it'll be fine if you choose to go that route.

Here at the Nexus, user pete666 grows grafted cactus cuttings under lights. Have a look at his 'Quest for most potent cactus' thread to find out more.

Unless you have a greenhouse or multi-thousand watt equiv. lighting with summer-sun equivalent light, you will not get good growth on adult columnar cactus indoors. Seedlings, sure-- grafts, OK. But adult plants need to be hibernated for the cold season if you want them to look healthy and not get ugly etiolation.

You should absolutely never water your cactus once the temperature approaches and stays below 50 degrees F, because the roots go into a hibernation mode, and will not be able to effectively process the water-- it will significantly increase the chances of root rot, and can kill your whole plant.

Bridges are notoriously sensitive to cold wet damage-- pachanoi are less affected but still at risk.

Cactus in the Trichocereus family naturally hibernate in cold dry weather-- the most imperative thing to remember when winterizing your plants is that dry roots make for cold-hardy plants (within their safe range that is-- they can still be killed if the temps get too far towards or below freezing because the water in the flesh will freeze, rupturing their cellular walls)

You should always stop watering entirely at least a couple weeks before temps reach into the low 50's at night to allow complete soil drying to prepare the plant for winterizing. This timing will vary depending on how well draining/water retaining your soil mix is.

Wrinkling/shrinking without water over winter is perfectly normal and safe for your plants and does not equal any need for watering-- it happens in nature too-- and as long as you have your plants in hibernation-- meaning bone-dry soil, temps between ~40's and max of low 60's F-- you should see no etiolation even in strong lights, they do NOT need water-- they will be fine until spring!

This is the healthiest way to overwinter columnar plants-- because unless you have a way to keep temps above 60F minimum AND light that is summer sun equivalent, you will get ugly etiolation and disfigurement of your adult plant, which can not be undone.

Most people in non-ideal environments have no choice but to overwinter/hibernate their columnars unless they can keep the temps above 60F and provide sunlight that will not etiolate the plants-- it's just part of the game we have to play if we want healthy cactus in northern climates.

Well, I have small (max 25cm) grafted specimens in small containers so the space and light is properly utilized. Check here

In my case it make sense to grow indoors because with good genes and 0.1% alkaloid content I might have about 27g of M/m2/half year.

But with higher specimens on their own roots the light requirement is much higher and the size of containers impede ideal space and light utilization.

I think if you don't care how much it costs and how much you get for your money and you buy HQI or LED lights with enough lumens (something like 1kW/m2 for HQI), you can keep them growing, though this may be true for specimens up to the height of 1m or so.
So this route is far from optimal and it's not worth the effort and money.

But An1cca has direct experience, he is growing indoors...

I do have limited experience growing a singular peruvianus cacti indoors along side my cannabis plants in order to utilize all the growing space. Using a 250W blue spectrum CFL in a grow area of 60X60cm with the light height averaging approximately 1m above the cacti I can say from my personal growing experience, it works pretty goddamn well! Obviously the growth rate is exponential so I can't give an exact figure, but I will say for this specific 4 year old slower growing peruvianus, the last month its grown about 1-2 inches (just eyeballing it) or pretty fast in other words considering its a cactus. It may not be as good as full summer sun but does pretty well indoors provided you have a cannabis type of setup, you will see noticeable results in my own experience. Here's a picture of the prickly "beast" lol, not the best of specimens but it's ight.

That's very curious KT-- and contradicts loads of documented efforts to grow adult columnars indoors with far higher wattage than you are telling us about.

Do you have a pic of your lights themselves? Being a meter above the plants with a CFL should result in only a tiny fraction of the available light penetration with the way light intensity decreases with distance. Many people have their T5's just inches away from their plants to ensure good saturation--

I look forward to more details.

pic of lights? Consider it done. The light source being a meter away was just an average approximation considering that as the cannabis plants its intended to be used for grow, the light moves up with them. The light in general stays about 10-20cm above the canopy of the cannabis plants which grow from a height of 0 to 1m (GSC auto flowers). So at the start of the grow, the light stays just above the cacti at about 10cm (longest period) and towards the end say about 1.1-1.2m (approx). Hence me coming up with a top of the head avg of 1m. I don't really perceive too much of a difference in growth with this range of difference, but obviously it does better the closer it is.

P.S. I will add that the cacti alternates between indoors and outdoors provided the weather is right, which living in the UK is pretty trash most of the time. If you want updates by any chance just PM me.

Edit: Light cycle equals 18h/d when in use, again nothing special but does pretty well regardless. Perhaps someone else on this forum will chime in on their experience growing indoors for better results.

GLAD I SPARKED A CONVO!! Good info i think i am going to winter them for now but i am going to be looking into things more and in a couple months i might revive the thread with some more ??'S

KING T...would it be col i shoot you a message in a few days i might have a couple ?'s about how things went with the 1 in the pic.

there is a person who goes by Gttbod on mycotek.org that has many years of experience in growing cacti. i trust his grows and knowledge as far as cacti go.