For plants that mean to stay.
Plants Cacti
Cactaceae
A real hole, a tray under it, and walls that hold their shape in a south window. No reservoir anywhere near it.
2 pieces
Every one printed to order in Yerevan at the size you ask for. Tap a code, send a photo of the plant and the pot it is in now, and a size comes back the same day.
The pan. For a globular cactus or a clump, where the roots run sideways under the surface and a deep pot just holds wet soil no root ever reaches. 78 mm of medium, which is enough.
200 mm across, 98 mm tall. Holds 1.75 litres. Rim diameter from 160 to 300 mm.
The column, for the tap-rooted and the tall ones. A 1.37 height-to-width ratio gives a Ferocactus or a young Cereus somewhere to send the root down, and gives the plant enough ballast not to go over.
140 mm across, 192 mm tall. Holds 1.75 litres. Rim diameter from 100 to 220 mm.
Start from this drawing and change everything
The editor opens on our shape for a cactus: the proportion, the drainage and whether there is a reservoir at all are already set the way this page argues for. Then every slider moves. Worth changing for a cactus:
We make these and they are good pieces. They are not for this plant, and here is the reason in each case.
These are the figures the pieces are drawn to rather than measurements taken off a finished one, and they are a starting point for your plant rather than a rule. Send us what it is in now and we will move them.
Mostly rock. We would put a cactus in something like two thirds mineral to one third organic: pumice, coarse volcanic grit, a hard-fired clay, with just enough bark or coir to hold the plant up and hold a little feed. Armenia sits on the grit for this, which is the cheapest part of the whole exercise and the part that does the most work.
If you can squeeze a handful of your mix and it stays in a ball, a cactus will be wetter in it than it wants to be, in any pot, including ours.
The wet layer at the bottom of a pot is a fixed depth for a given mix. It does not care how wide the pot is. So a wide shallow pan and a narrow deep column can hold the same 1.75 litres and behave completely differently: in the pan, that wet layer is most of the root ball, and in the column it is the bottom fifth of it.
That is the whole reason we sell two plain pots and not one, and it is why the first question back from us is never how big your plant is but what shape its roots are.
A printed wall does not breathe the way an unglazed terracotta one does. We are not going to pretend otherwise. What we do instead is put the air in from below and from the mix: an open floor, a foot that lifts the pot off its tray so the hole is never sitting in a puddle, and a recommendation to go coarser in the mix than you think you need.
A cactus in the right mix in a plastic pot outlives a cactus in the wrong mix in a beautiful clay one. The mix is doing most of it.
Soak it until water runs out of the hole, empty the tray, and then leave it alone until the pot is light in the hand. In a bright July window that might be a week; in a dim January room it can be two months and the honest answer is not to water at all through the cold.
Weight is a better instrument than a finger or a schedule. Pick the pot up the day after you water and remember it. That is your full mark.