Hello friends, today I’m going to show you how to safely repot a cactus.
There is a cactus in my home. I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of handling them. I love the way they look, I love all plants, but the dog bites you enough, you don’t mess with the dog. And working at the houseplant store for a couple of years, I worked on a lot of cacti, and I was bitten many times, so I just don’t like having that energy in my home. I did not like working around them. But there are a couple of cacti that I have had in my possession for a couple of years, and I don’t intend on getting rid of them just because I’m not the biggest fan of them. They do still have a place in my heart, and this is one of them right here.
I got this one from a big box store probably like six, seven years ago at this point. When I purchased it, it was just one little barrel-looking cactus coming up the middle. I think this is actually a type of Mammillaria cactus. I think it’s called like a “red-headed Irishman,” but it started to get a little skinny at one point because I wasn’t giving it the light that it required. So I ended up cutting off the top of the plant, and since then, it shot off all five of these little nubs right here.
And I’m not able to care for this plant to its fullest extent. I guess I have to let it sit dry a little too long because if I water it, it’s going to sit in the water too long. So that’s why it’s a little bit like brighter yellow, sun-bleached looking, because I haven’t been able to water it the way it’s supposed to.
On top that there is some nice new green growth coming in as it’s starting to grow for the growing season. But I would like to keep that growth looking as good as possible and maybe get the plant just looking overall a little bit healthier in the future. So I figured after seven years, it’s a good enough time to repot it into a planter that’s much more suited for this type of plant.
So today, we’re going to be safely transporting this cactus into one of these planters right here. I haven’t really decided yet. I have this more classic color terracotta planter, and I also have this more Basalt, a darker gray color terracotta planter in the back here. So we will see what looks better, decide together, and then plant it up in one and dress it up a little bit.
But first and foremost, we’ve got to safely get this thing out of here. And like I said, I’ve been bit many times, and I’m not going to get bitten again by this thing. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been avoiding repotting it. But I know how to do this. I’ve done this hundreds of times. I can perfectly handle this. So we’re going to use one of my best friends when it comes to gardening activities, which is kitchen utensils. So I’m going to be using a butter knife today, as well as a couple of other kitchen utensils that I will bring up as they are needed.
But we’re going to go around the gaps of this planter and just loosen up the soil a little bit. Cacti don’t get crazy roots like a Monstera deliciosa might if you have ever potted one of those, or like a ZZ plant, and they are fully root-bound. I’m not expecting to see that type of roots inside this planter. While there might be a lot of roots, they’re going to be really small, fine, lacy roots in comparison to those that you might find on a tropical plant.
And now that we’ve loosened this up decently, we’re going to employ another kitchen tool into our arsenal. We have some tongs. Now, these have silicone on them, but every single pair of tongs that I’ve ever encountered that has the silicone on them, the silicone comes off. So we’re just going to use these tongs and just literally pull our plants out of the planter. How easy was that? I’m not bleeding at all. Can’t say the same for past times that I ever potted a cacti.
So, so far so good. There is a good amount of roots, but they look nothing like you would see on a tropical plant like a Monstera deliciosa, ZZ plant, golden pothos, spider plant. All of those roots are very, very robust. But this plant does not have that. There’s a bunch of gravel that came out of the planter. I did use some aquarium gravel as a top dressing, but I’m not really thrilled with the way that it looks. So I think I’m going to switch it out to probably like sand to give it more of that desert vibe than the aquarium gravel did.
I’m going to use the tongs and the knife to remove that gravel. And in fact, I might save some of it because I think it might actually look kind of nice if I just throw like a couple of pieces of gravel on top of some sand. That might actually be even more of the desert vibe than just the plain sand. So yeah, I think I will hold on to a couple of these. And if some of these stones do end up in the soil mixture, there’s already stones in the soil mix that we’re using, so I don’t see that being a problem whatsoever.
And I don’t think I’m going to loosen up the roots on this cactus. I don’t really think there’s a need to because it’s just not as root-bound as like a spider plant or as easy plant would be. There, you really got to break it apart. This is not that case.
So let’s just pick it up with the tongs.That’s really, really nice. I really like the way it looks with this tiny little lip. But let’s see if it looks a little bit better with the planter that has no lip at all.
That’s also really nice. I think I like the one better that has a little bit of the lip, though. And I think the winter that I have this in has enough of this Basalt terracotta and can use some more regular terracotta, in my opinion. So we’ll also keep that in mind. Of course, aesthetics play a big part in the planter that you’re choosing. Always choose the planter that’s going to appeal most to your aesthetics because once it’s in the planter, it’s living in there until you have to repot it again.
And I do not want to repot this thing for a long time. I think it’ll probably be living in this planter for just about as long as it was living in the last one. And I’m not sure if this is concerning you, the planter are just barely, barely bigger than this planter that I have here. But it’s a cactus. Cacti and succulents do not need that much extra space compared to tropicals where you might be increasing the tropical’s planter diameter by an inch or two inches. A cactus, you could probably even keep it the same, just change the soil out a little bit. But I think like half an inch to an inch is where you’re going to find that sweet spot.
So today, I’m going to be potting up this cactus with some of the classic cacti .
We’re going to continue our kitchen utensil arsenal with a large spoon to do some potting with. You can use a garden trowel. You can use a planter that you already have aside if you’re repotting something. I love to use the planter that I just pulled out of the soil to scoop up soil. There’s really no need for a gardening trowel, although, okay, you know what? There is a need for one. I’ve just worked my way around it for the last eight years. So I put about a half an inch of soil in the bottom of this planter that we’re going to be planting it in. Let’s get our cactus and set it inside. Oh, that’s literally perfect. I think that’s the perfect height. It’s got about a quarter inch, maybe almost a half an inch, it’s below the lip, where we can fill it up, maybe an eighth of an inch with sand to give it that nice look.
So I think this is already going pretty well. To fill in those gaps around the perimeter where there’s some air pockets forming with some of that soil and really trying to only fill in around the perimeter and not add any soil on top of the existing soil. Maybe just a tiny bit’s okay, but we’re already going to be putting sand on top, so I really don’t want to raise that soil level much more than we have because that can cause some rotting issues down the line. Go ahead and give it a little spank, as I always like to do.
Normally, I would take my finger and stick it down around the perimeter, but absolutely not when it comes to this. So I’m going to use the back of my spoon end, and I’m going to stick that down the perimeter to make sure that there’s no air bubbles around the sides because if there were, when we go to repot this plant, that soil is just going to sink down. It’s not going to look as good. And we’re going to cover this with sand and let it sit for a couple of days before we go ahead and water this.
Normally, you would water a tropical plant immediately after repotting it, but with cacti and succulents, you should really let them settle in for like three to five days because they are a little sensitive when it comes to water. But if you plant them in the dry soil, let them sit for a couple of days, when you go ahead and water them a couple of days later, they’ll actually be searching for that water. So it’s going to be much better, and you will not have any of those rot problems.
Of course, you’ve got to make sure that you’re giving your plants enough light to begin with. That’s often where rot comes into play. But getting it out of this ceramic planter with no drainage hole into this breathable terracotta planter with a drainage hole, I think rot problems are already going to be a thing of the past with this one.
I’ve got a little dry paintbrush that we’re just going to use to go around and ensure that there’s no dirt where we don’t want it to be on our planter and on our cactus. Really good tool to get in between the gaps. I learned this from you guys. I wish I would have figured out how amazing a dry paintbrush is earlier in my indoor gardening career. So I thank you guys for that tip, and now I’m passing it on to the rest of you.
And I’m going to employ a smaller spoon from my kitchen utensil arsenal, and I’m just going to start spooning some of that sand on top. Sometimes I like to use a funnel as well to kind of place the sand where I want to. But it’s just going around the perimeter of this. That’s a lot easier when I’m making like a cacti garden, but I can pretty easily fill in the perimeter with just this little spoon here.
All right, that looks good. And then just to make sure we get all that sand underneath all these little cacti that are leaning on the end and also get some of that excess sand off, let’s just give it another spank. Amazing. Then we can get our paintbrush once again and just go around the lip of the planter to get any of that sand off. And then why not just fish up a couple of these pieces of gravel and just kind of lightly stick them in on the soil just to give it more of that desert appearance, like we just scooped up some desert sand right from the desert, which sounds not sustainable. So please don’t do that.
You can even just use the back of the spoon to kind of press them in a little bit lower so it looks like they’ve been sitting there for centuries, just buried into the sand. And that’s really all there is to it. We can give another brush if we need to, just to clear off any of those little spaces that we missed before, but I’m feeling pretty good about this. No blood, no band-aids needed, no pricks. We got everything we needed done.
These tongs are such a savior when it comes to repotting cacti. Any tongs will do. If you do have the silicone on them, it could probably get stuck in the needles or gonna break them or whatnot, so metal tongs are definitely the way to go. But like I said, I have yet to meet a silicone tongue where the silicone just doesn’t slip right on and off, so it doesn’t seem like there’s anything you gotta worry about there.
But that’s going to do it for today’s article, safely repotting a cactus. I am so much more happy with the way that this looks inside this nice terracotta planter than it did in this sad, mass-produced, unbreathable ceramic planter. You get what I’m saying? It’s giving desert vibes, it’s giving American West, and I’m here for it. It’s like when we obsessively brushing this thing for the next couple of days, just making it look as perfect as possible for it to spend the next seven or eight years inside the same planter, looking fabulous.
So thank you again for joining me while we safely repotted this cactus.
Have a great time!
