The master revealed

This is the last installment on my visit with Bill Munkacsy, a master grower of cacti, based in Northern California. This segment will focus on more of Bill’s growing secrets to raising such magnificent plants. But I must tell you upfront that if I were to follow all of Bill’s suggestions religiously, I would most probably end up killing most of my plants. But there is a treasure of learning to be had here, and one must learn to take the advice, then adapt these to one’s growing conditions and habits.

As Bill continuously stressed to me during my brief visit that day, climate and, in particular, temperature are some of the vital ingredients to his successful culture of his plants. So, our respective microenvironments are already more than half the battle to successful culture and should dictate which types of succulents we should choose to grow.

Cacti need considerable temperature shifts from day- and nighttime in order to grow well and produce robust spination and healthy growth. In Alamo, California, there is easily a 20-to-30-degree differential between day and night temperatures, and cacti, as well as other succulents, just thrive on this. This does not mean, however, that we can’t grow nice cacti and succulents in our part of the world. Gymnocalyciums, many Mammillarias, Lophophoras, many Turbinicarpus, practically all Haworthias, Gasterias, Euphorbias and the like do quite well in our constrained microenvironments here in Metro Manila. But more temperamental and difficult to grow cacti like most Copiapoas and Ariocarpus don’t grow to their best potential in, say, Makati — just too many environmental constraints, including blocked sunlight already diffused by the pollution and humidity levels in our air and the lack of proper air circulation.

Looking at Bill’s greenhouses, the outside material is made of quite opaque (to me, anyway) fiberglass. If I were to use this material here in Makati, my plants would all etiolate for lack of enough good sunlight.

However, in Bill’s case, I could literally see some of his plants with scorch marks caused by excessive hot sunlight. Bill explained that the intensity of the sun’s rays in this part of the world is quite high. In fact, during the day of my visit, Bill said that the sun was actually quite hazy because of some nearby brushfires. It was also quite cloudy, and yet I found the sunlight to be quite intense. In more tropical climates like ours, the sun’s rays are diffused by the high humidity levels in the air. But in Bill’s temperate world, this isn’t the case.

Which leads me to another interesting point. Before Bill moved to Alamo several years ago, he lived in a lower area in California where, in his words, there was a lot more humidity in the air. In his old home, Bill grew all his plants in porous clay pots to insure that his growing medium would dry out. He also watered less in this more humid environment.

However, when he moved to the less humid confines of Alamo, he quickly transferred his wards into plastic pots. The growing medium in plastic pots dries out a lot more slowly than in porous clay pots. But in a low-humidity environment, these plastic pots can dry out in two or three days during the summer months. So, Bill was quite sure that in very humid Metro Manila, clay pots are the way to go for successful cactus culture.

Now, the other interesting cultural regimen that Bill employs is that he grows all his plants, including sensitive Ariocarpus, in a mixture of 50 percent perlite/pumice (no sand) and 50 percent organic compost. All the succulent books and Internet sites out there will tell you that using organic compost in your growing mix for sensitive Mexican rarities like Ariocarpus is a complete no. And yet Bill’s Ariocarpus were clearly thriving. Bill also likes to fertilize with each watering, using a very diluted mixture of 1/16 strength of the recommended fertilizer dosage. With an organic mix, I wouldn’t even consider additional fertilizer for my Ariocarpus.

What is the lesson here? Simply that there are no one, two or 50 secret recipes for growing mixes. There is a wide array to choose and use from. The key, however, is that this must be synchronized with your growing conditions (sunlight, temperature, air circulation) and growing habits. By growing habits, I mean your watering, fertilizing, repotting and pest control actions.

Bill’s greenhouses are all fully enclosed by the opaque fiberglass. You can’t see through the fiberglass. One of the chief scourges of growing cacti in Northern California is frost. Frost can hit any time of the year — yes, even in summer — though it’s more prevalent during the colder winter months. So, succulents have to be protected all year round, hence the fully enclosed greenhouses. So, if the greenhouse is fully enclosed, and air circulation is critical to good growing, how does one get good airflow in a fully enclosed greenhouse like Bill’s? Well, in each of Bill’s structures, he has built-in fans, which he turns on during the hottest parts of the day, and turns off during the night when the outside temperatures really drop and cool off.

So, Bill had a couple of final suggestions for me. If I felt my greenhouse wasn’t getting enough air circulation, I might try using a simple electric fan in my structure. And, to simulate the wider temperature levels of day and night as one would experience in the desert, why not use air-conditioning in the night for your plants? Bill is not the first grower to suggest this to me by the way. Steven Hammer, the great Haworthia and Mesembryanthemum expert based in southern California, also suggested the air-conditioning treatment to me when I visited him a few years ago. Sounds wacky, sounds expensive, but I might experiment with this idea one day soon.

I sure learned a lot from my visit with Bill that day. But I have to take what I learned over there and apply these to my growing conditions over here. Simply and blindly following the culture instructions in a book written by a grower based in a Western/temperate environment (which, unfortunately, many of us have done in the past) is one sure way to maim or even kill one’s succulent wards. Remember, we live in a totally different climate and environment over here, so we must learn to adapt.

If you do, I can honestly say that you too can grow some really fantastic and magnificent plants like Bill Munkacsy.