Ensuring a Smooth Transition to Your Home”

There are some important precautions to take when you first receive your mail order cactus delivery for best results. Cacti ship remarkably well through the mail. They are masters of survival and harsh environments and therefore sitting in a box moving across the country for a week or two has little to no impact on the health of the cactus. We take special precautions before we ship any of our plants. Preparations will start anywhere from a few days to two weeks ahead of shipment. This is to ensure the cactus is well prepared for travel. Because the days leading up to the shipment and the shipment itself are periods of change for the cactus its vital to slowly and gradually reintroduce the cactus to natural environmental conditions. 

As soon as your new cactus is received, it is important to open the box and carefully unwrap it. Let the cactus slowly adapt to your home by letting it sit out for a few days in open air away from any direct sun before planting it, light misting of the roots everyday with water is helpful but not required. Once it has been at least two to three days the cactus is ready to be planted into dry soil. Once planted in dry soil, do not water the cactus for another three to five days once it has been planted. Once regular watering begins start slowly, and work your way up to regular watering over the span of a few waterings. In the active growing season it is possible to feed the cactus a diluted solution of any commercially available cactus fertilizer, or a vegetable/flower fertilizer at half strength with every watering.

These steps are important because cacti enter a rest period of sorts when out of soil / or in the dark being shipped. Treating a cactus that has just arrived in the mail like any other regularly growing cactus can shock it. The roots need time to adjust to their new growing medium and heal from being transplanted. It is only once they have settled into their new home that they can begin to absorb water at full capacity once again. This is the primary reason the introduction to the new environment as soon as they are taken out of the box should be slow and gradual from the start.