Cactuses are growing slowly. It takes even years to show a significant growth.
However, if you want your cactus to grow faster, you must find the best ideas on how to make cactus grow faster along with the general care tips to stimulate them to flower.
Stimulating cactus to grow faster basically requires you to have a consistent watering schedule, use soft water for watering, fertilize the cactus during the growth period, allow an appropriate air exchange and allow the cactus to go dormant in its cold period.
For more details, here are the full review of how to make cactus grow faster.
How Fast Do Cactus Grow?
How fast do the cactus actually grow? Considering the variety of cactus species, each of them will have the different pace to grow. However, most of the, will show the same growth stages.
When a cactus is in the early stage of growth, 2 to 3 years are the time that a cactus will show its growth within a couple of cm.
However, when it is growing more than you may expect, it only take a year for 1-3 cm growth. Generally, a cactus needs 10-15 years to reach its maximum growth or sometimes that is even longer.
If you are wondering how fast the cactus grow, you must deeply check the growth stages of a cactus plant, leading you to understand better how fast the cactus will grow. So here are the growth stages of a cactus:
Germination
It usually takes a few weeks or even months for you to wait for the cactus seed growth from the time it is planted into the soil.
The first thing to recognize showing the cactus growth is the spines that start sprouting. However, not all of the cactus have spines.
Patience is the key of the germination process. If you notice nothing dealing with the rapid changes in the first month, well, you are just waiting. At this stage, there is nothing to do to make a cactus grow faster but wait.
Seedling Stage
Seedling stage is the second stage that is a must-know to determine how to make cactus grow faster.
Seedling stage will let you to whether or not there is noticeable development. This stage allows you to recognize that only a few cm-s a cactus will grow in its first couple of years. After this stage, it would be normal to notice that a cactus grow 1-3 cm every year.
How To Make Cactus Grow Arms
There are several tips to follow if you want your cactus grows its arms. Read out every tips we are sharing below and make sure you don’t miss a single one.
1st Tips: Let Your Cactus to Go Sleep in the Winter
Natural environment usually lets the cactus to go sleep or be inactive in the high summer heat as they have a lack of water.
During summer or hot weather, cactuses do not grow. Instead, they focus on surviving both the high temperatures and transpiration.
Just because you want the cactus to grow fast doesn’t mean that you don’t let the plant grow naturally.
Most of cactus owners make mistakes by not allowing the plant to go dormant in the winter. As a result, the cactus will be so thin and having such elongated growth, leading to a weakening plant.
When you grow cactus indoor while it enters the cold winter, let it to go dormant. This will help the plant to prevent the irregular growth and nutrients reduction. Winter dormancy will also make your cactus produce flower buds.
When the temperatures outdoor is lowering, you need to give less water. This will let your cactus have a dormancy. However, this doesn’t mean that you stop watering. The cactus still need water to grow healthy.
It is cold in the winter so you may think that your cactus need no watering, well, it is totally wrong. Pouring no water to the cactus in the winter will just let them to dry out and experience a stunted growth in the future.
Thus, keep your cactus in a cool area in November up to the first week of March. In this period, the temperatures will be around 47-54 F. This is the important condition since the lower temperatures will help reduce water evaporation and stimulate your cactus to continue growing.
2nd Tips: Provide Sufficient Amount of Sunlight during Growth Area
If you want to make your cactus growing its arms or branches, the second tip to follow is to provide it with the sufficient amount of sunlight in its growth area.
When the plant go dormant in its natural habitat, you’ll need to provide sunlight to let it grow in the summer.
Cactus that grows in the dessert typically needs lots of bright light while the tropical type likes indirect but the bright sunlight.
Both types of cactus need lots of sunlight and mostly indirect light. In the summer, you can keep the plant in the windowsill, balcony or outside. However, avoid the high mid-day heat since it can burn your cactus.
Placing your cactus outdoors may be fine, but, it can have a burning effect. Also, make your cactus stay away from the direct sunlight for more than a couple of hours. Well, this also depends on the cactus species, too.
In short, one of the tips on how to make cactus grow faster is to provide enough sunlight, so that, it can grow well as you expected.
3rd Tip: Allow for Proper Exchange
Imagine your cactus grow its arms long and long, forming a special shape that makes it look beautiful. Well, it should be interesting.
Thus, allowing for a proper exchange is one of the tip to follow. This way, cactus love a good air exchange. It hates high humidity and constant air that can lead it to slowly die.
So keep your cactus away under the air conditioning and by radiators in the winter. Just place it in a bright spot like balcony, windowsill and outdoor locations.
Fresh air in the summer will let the plant grow well. When the weather is extremely hot, move it indoors.
4th Tip: Do Watering Trick
Another way to make your cactus grow well and faster is to do the watering trick.
Once in a while, it is just possible to perform the greenhouse watering trick that can be done occasionally which is usually one or two times depending on how many times you are watering the cactus. This will copy the natural humid ambience and promote the cactus’s growth and flowering.
In performing the watering trick, the first thing to do is to water the plant before the sun rises. This way, misting it is also possible. Afterwards, cover the plant using a plastic cloche or other type of cover.
When you see the sun is rising and hitting the cactus, the humidity will be increased inside the cover, copying the hot and rainy weather in the summer.
It is recommended that you perform this watering trick for an hour. Then, you can open the cover slowly. Avoid opening the cover suddenly since it will also affect the temperature changes.
When you are watering the cactus, be sure that you use only the warm water which is around 86 – 104 degrees F. When it experiences misting, you may use hot water because the water temperatures will significantly drop after you mist the cactus.
5th Tip: Don’t Repot or Separate Pups from Flowering Cactus
If you don’t expect to disturb the growth of your cactus, make sure you don’t move you don’t move it to the other pots when it is flowering. If you do so, the flower will just fall of. Or, the cactus will stop flowering altogether.
What’s more?
Don’t separate the pups from a flowering cactus because it will disturb the normal growth of the plant.
Not only repotting cactus but also separating pups from flowering will annoy the plant’s growth. Keep in mind that the best time to move your cactus into another pots is before the growing season begins which is by the end of dormancy.
6th Tip: Use Soft Water To Water The Cactus
Using soft water to water the cactus is also one of the best tips on how to make cactus grow faster and well. This is due to the fact that soft water contains low minerals.
In this case, cactus is very sensitive to minerals. If the minerals accumulate in the soil and raise its level, the cactus growth will be interfered. It will even cause death.
Accordingly, using soft water which has low mineral is highly recommended. In this case, rainwater is considered the best type of water used to water the cactus.
Further, distilled water, bottled and reverse-osmosis water are also good for watering cactus. You can also use TDS meter to measure the water purity.
7th Tip: Give Your Cactus Fertilizers
To help cactus produce flower and grow faster, give it fertilizers. However, you should be aware of the fertilization.
In this tip, you must avoid fertilizing the cactus during dormancy. Instead, it is highly recommended that you fertilize it during its growth season.
Slowly, release the fertilizer for the cactus. Typically, the fertilizers are able to feed the cactus for a long time up to 4-6 months.
Bone-meal like egg shells is considered as a fertilizer that you can add to the bottom of the pot. It will slowly release vitamins and other nutrients without harming the plant.
Fertilizing the cactus will also mimic the natural fertilization in its natural habitat.
Another fertilization option is liquid fertilizer. You can simply dissolve it in the water and use it to water the plant.
In this case, choose the liquid fertilizer which is low in nitrogen but high in potassium. You can mix it with the water and use it directly when you want to fertilize the plant during the growth season.
8th Tip: Repot Your Cactus Once in A While
When the cactus is flowering, well, it is not the time to repot it. However, repotting it once in a while is also needed to promote the healthy growth and keep the cactus alive.
It is not only necessary but also beneficial since the old soil will accumulate released minerals out of the water along with the unused fertilizers. Moreover, cactus must need more space to grow as it grows bigger.
How often do you need to repot the cactus? It much depends on which water you use and whether your cactus is overgrown or not. So, it needs other bigger pots to grow well.
How To Make Cactus Grow Flower
As we have mentioned, one thing to make your cactus keep producing flowers is not to repot it when it starts flowering.
Once you see flower buds, never move it to the other pot. Otherwise, the buds will just fall off and the cactus will never be flowering again.
Fastest Growing Cactus From Seed
Follow these steps to quickly grow cactus from seeds:
- Fill a container or pot with the moist and free draining compost. Scatter the cactus seeds over the soil surface.
- Sprinkle a thin layer of fine grit over the cactus seeds.
- After the seedlings, remove the plastic bag and water when the compost dries out.
- Transplant the cactus sprout.
- Fill a small pot with the compost and plant the seedling into the place.
- Fill around the seedlings with the compost and water.
When Is Cactus Growing Season?
It is best observed that the cactus’s growing season is from the middle of March to the end of September. During this period, you must give water to the cactus sufficiently and let it dry out before you water it once more.
Final Words
All in all, the tips on how to make cactus grow faster are all applicable. Make sure you follow all the tips given to grow your cactus well and faster.
