Shipping & care

When it ships. Orders leave within 2 to 4 business days, USPS Priority Mail. A cutting does not go in a box until its cut face is hard, dry and shiny. If the piece you have bought is still drying, allow a week or two before it goes out, and longer on a thick one — the drying is set by how thick the piece is rather than by a date, roughly a week for every inch of stem thickness. That waiting happens here on my rack rather than in your mailbox. If an order is going to take longer than those 2 to 4 business days, I email you the new date and you can wait for it or cancel for a full refund — your choice, not mine.

Flat rate. One flat shipping charge per order, however many plants are in the box, and free once the order passes a set amount. Both figures are in the strip at the top of this page and again in your cart before you pay. Nothing else is added: no handling fee, no packing fee, no heat-pack fee, no charge for a weather hold. The price on a plant is the price of the plant, and the only things that join it at checkout are postage and sales tax where it applies.

How it is packed. Cuttings ship bare root, wrapped in paper and boxed snug so nothing moves in transit. Rooted and potted plants ship with the soil knocked off and the roots dry, or in dry soil, whichever travels better. Every box is packed by hand, on one table, by one person.

Tracking. The tracking number is emailed to you the moment the label is printed.

Where live plants can go. Live cactus is agricultural material, and where it may travel is decided by law rather than by me. Every line in this section is about live plants. Merch is not agricultural material and none of it applies to a shirt, a sticker or a print — where those can go is set out under "How merch ships" further down this page.
Live plants go to the lower 48 United States only. No Alaska, no Hawaii, no US territories, and nothing international: a plant crossing a border needs import and inspection paperwork I do not issue.
Some states require paperwork to travel with each parcel of plant material coming in. Where I cannot meet what a destination state asks for, I do not ship there, and the states I am not sending live plants to today are listed at the top of this page. I am not making a promise on your behalf about any other state's rules — if you have reason to think yours wants something particular, tell me before you order and I will find out rather than guess.
Tell the cart which state the box is going to and it stops there, before you pay, rather than afterwards. That box is optional and the card page collects the full address later, so an order can still reach me with a destination I cannot post to. If that happens it is flagged the moment it arrives, cancelled before anything is packed, and refunded in full.

Weather holds. A box that freezes on the way, or one that cooks, ruins the plant inside it. When the forecast where the box is going is below roughly 35°F or above 100°F, I do not post it: I hold it here until the run is safe and email you the date.
Where I can, I tell you before you pay rather than after. The cart asks for the destination ZIP, and if you give it the shop reads the forecast there, stops at Checkout, shows you the temperature it read, and lets you decide whether to order at all. That box is optional, like the state box above it, and leaving it blank never stops a sale — but it leaves the check nowhere to look, and then the first you hear of a hold is the email.
If a hold happens after you have paid — the ZIP was blank, or the forecast turned, or the road is bad even where the destination is fine — you get an email with a new date and a choice: wait for it, or cancel for a full refund. A hold never costs you anything, and it never shortens the 48-hour guarantee below, which runs from the day the box is delivered.
One honest note about how that check works. The automatic part reads a published forecast for the place the box is going. Nobody publishes a forecast for the inside of a truck between here and there, so the route is my own judgement, and I will hold a box on it.

When it arrives. Open the box the day it lands. If anything is crushed, frozen or rotted, tell me within 48 hours of delivery and send photographs — the claim form is on your order page and the whole policy is on the Returns page. A claim that arrives later is still recorded and I still read it. Scuffs, a few lost spines, corking and a little dehydration are normal on a living plant and are not damage. Where I can, I photograph what goes in a box before the lid goes on, so a claim is never one person's word against another's.

Unpack right away. Take the plant out of the box, brush off packing material, and let it sit somewhere bright, dry and out of direct sun for a few days. A cutting that arrives cool, wrinkled or light is fine — it is just thirsty. Soft is a different thing: soft flesh means rot, and that is what the 48-hour guarantee is for.

Check the callus — cuttings only. The cut face should already be hard, dry and shiny, like a fingernail rather than like flesh. If it is not, stand the piece upright somewhere shaded with good airflow until it is. How long that takes is set by how thick the piece is, not by the calendar: allow about a week of drying for every inch of stem thickness, which puts an ordinary cutting at two to three weeks, a slim pup at a few days, and a really fat column at longer than either. The face is what tells you it is done, and you will never be early. Do not put a fresh wet cut into soil. A rooted plant has no cut face and skips this step.

Pot it up. Use a fast-draining mix — roughly two parts gritty mineral to one part cactus soil. Pumice is the best of the mineral part and perlite works. Pot into dry or barely damp mix, never wet. Set a cutting one to two inches deep, just enough to stand it up: deeper is not safer, it is the commonest way to lose a cutting. If it wobbles, stake it, and never solve a balance problem by burying more of the plant.

Watering a cutting. Nothing on planting day. About a week later, a splash — just enough to darken the top inch of the mix, and no further down than that. A second small sip a week after that. The first proper soak only once you can see roots. There is no full soak before roots appear, and watering a cutting because it looks thirsty is the commonest way to lose one: it has no roots to drink with yet. Roots usually take about two months, and longer in winter, which is fine. Around week six it looks its worst, and that is normally the point just before roots.

Watering a rooted plant. A plant that arrives with roots is not on the cutting schedule. Pot it into the same dry, fast-draining mix, then water it the way you would any established cactus: soak the whole pot, let it dry out, soak it again, testing with a finger a couple of knuckles down rather than going by the calendar. Never leave a pot standing in a saucer.

Light. Bright light, but ease into full sun. It has just spent a few days in a dark box, so give it shade with plenty of ambient light for a few days, then half sun, then full. Going from shade to hard sun in the space of a week is enough to scar a plant permanently. New growth is what tells you a cutting has rooted.

Do not panic. A little shrivelling while rooting is normal. Mushy, dark, sour-smelling tissue is not — cut back to clean green flesh with a sterilised blade, let it dry, and start again.