Simple to create cactus dish gardens

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The Cactus Dish Garden
What was the writer thinking? Cactus dish gardens are as common as cacti in a Tucson garden. That's true but so is the notion that gardeners from all over the universe, okay not the universe, but the world, visit this Web site. Yes, this site is geared for Tucson and vicinity gardeners. But once these pages go on the World Wide Web anyone with an internet connection can visit. And not too surprising there have been word searches for dish gardens. Someone out there in the world wants to know something about cactus dish gardens. They do make nice gifts for the less than perfect plant lovers who can't remember to water.

All kinds of interesting small cacti can be found around Tucson whether it's at specialty nurseries like Bach's Cactus nursery or Tanque Verde Greenhouses. Many small cacti specimens can be found in the chain store garden centers as well. What might be difficult to find is a suitable container for displaying the cacti. You might have to look a little harder for a container but often they can be found where you purchase the cacti. The specialty nurseries that grow and sell cacti will often have a variety of suitable clay containers for sale.

What you may want to try, providing you plan ahead, is to grow your own cacti and succulents whether you start them from seed or propagate stem or leaf cuttings from plants you already own. (See Making More Plants, Fall, 1999) That makes creating a cactus and succulent dish garden a bit more difficult and certainly more time consuming. But when it comes to gardening, what's the rush?

To plant a cactus dish garden you need cacti, a porous potting mix, a suitable heavy container and either heavy gloves or some sort of tool to handle the prickly cactus. Simple metal or wooden tongs work well. If you want to be a little more creative with your dish garden you can add a rock or sand mulch, pebbles, simulate water using a small mirror, add drift wood, small ceramic animals if you can find them and other decorative tidbits. I once had a small, sun bleached rodent skull on one of my dish gardens until the cat found it.

Any container can hold a cactus dish garden but the lower flat containers seem to be the most appropriate for the smaller specimens. Although plastic containers will work, the heavier clay or ceramic are generally used and have more eye appeal.

A selection of cacti and succulents purchased at a chain store garden center.
A mixed bag of cactus seed was purchased from one of the seed catalogs and grown in a greenhouse until they were a suitable size for dish gardens.
A small sampling of suitable cactus and succulent dish garden containers.

Cactus and succulent mix potting soil can be purchased in bags from any garden center including the chain stores like Target and the Home Depot. You want a soil that doesn't hold to much moisture so good drainage is a must or your cactus may end up rotting. If there is a large drainage hole in the container you use you can place a piece of window screen or broken pottery over the hole before you fill the container with cactus mix potting soil.

Once the soil is in your container it's just a matter of placing your collection of cacti. It's nice to have a mix of thorny cacti and leafy succulents with some being taller. Most succulents can be handled with gloves while the spiny cactus might be better gently handled with tongs as illustrated in the photograph below.

While many of the succulents can be hand held you might want to take precaution with thorny cactus. These metal kitchen tongs worked well for transplanting.
Landscape stones were used to cover the cactus and soil mix to help keep the soil in place and give a rocky desert look.
A small, inexpensive mirror and a couple of pebbles were added to give the desert dish garden a watering hole.

Once the cacti and succulents are planted you can top the soil with gravel, decorative stone, or sand to hold the soil in place and help keep moisture away from the base of the cactus. Small, black lava stone leftover from the installation of a gas fireplace was used in the small dish garden on the far right in the picture at the top of this page. A small mirror was buried in the soil and surrounded with a couple small pebbles to represent a watering hole in the photo directly above this paragraph.

Cacti and succulents are drought survivors and only require occasional watering. Growth slows in the cooler winter months and less water is required than in the warmer summer months. Many of the varieties need strong indirect light to keep them from leaning toward the light source. Over time you can tell if there isn't enough light by the way the cacti start stretching and leaning toward the light. Relocate the dish garden for better lighting or rotate the container so the plant will lean in the opposite direction toward the light source.

Too much water will kill the cactus. Often the dead cactus will rot from the inside leaving a shell of the plant. The color of the plant will change but the unwary grower might not notice until someone points it out by saying, "Hey, how long has your cactus dish garden been dead?"

At first glance this cactus looks okay.
The same cactus as above sat in a cactus dish garden for months until someone told the owner that the plant had seen better days. Probably a victim of over watering.

If the dish garden gets the right amount of care, and cactus often thrive on neglect, the cactus and succulents will grow. Eventually they'll out grow their confined environment and will need to be moved to larger containers. If one of the specimens succumbs to too much water it can always be replaced with another to maintain the dish garden's overall appearance. (2002)