Today I performed lifesaving surgery on a cactus!! (Hopefully)

Many moons ago, when my girls were just little, we bought a cute little potted cactus.

It flourished, and grew….

and grew…..

and grew!!!

The little picture gives you an idea of it’s original size and as you can see, he’s done really well.

Unfortunately, I’m not an expert in cactus care and it looks like I made one of the number one mistakes when I recently re-potted into the pot you can see in this picture.

After a few weeks of being in it’s new home, I discovered it like this.

I thought it was just trying to re-adjust and persevered by propping it up straight which in hindsight was probably the biggest mistake I made.

It turns out, the pot was WAY too big and it was also being watered too regularly.
This has caused root rot, even though the plant itself looks lovely and healthy!!

Today, I watched a few Youtube videos on saving a cactus with root rot and they all said the same thing.
Cut it away and start again.

So, I got my sharpest knife, cut away the roots and the rotted areas and now my cactus looks like this.

You can see how long I waited to do this, because the tip of the cactus has started to bend up towards the sun!

Anyway, I am to put this on a warm sunny window and leave it until the end has calloused over, which could take a few months!
It needs to be turned occasionally to keep it nice and straight, so I may be able to fix the bend while I wait for this to happen.

Only time will tell now.
It will hopefully be ready for potting in the spring.
So, I’ve either finished it off completely today, or I’ve given it a new lease of life.

Watch this space!!