New small cactus bed in the backyard

Our siding project was completed 10 days ago. In spite of the hot weather, I was itching to get going to put everything back together — or maybe do a few things differently. Here’s the first renovated area I want to show you. I’ll have separate posts about the others.

This it what this narrow strip looked like before the new siding:

As you can see in the next photo, this area isn’t large, but it has high visibility (the second area with a yellow outline will be featured in my next post):

My original idea was to plant a row of columnar cacti in the strip on the north side of the house, between the two air conditioners (on the right in the photo below). But seeing how this side yard is mostly utilitarian (greenhouse, plant racks, clothesline), I decided to set up another rack on the south side of the first AC unit and create a smaller cactus bed around the corner (bottom left in the photo below).

The first step was to create a “raised” bed using Corten edging. I put “raised” in quotes because the soil level is only about 5 inches higher than before, but fortunately cacti are shallow-rooted.

I used 8" edging, with 3" below the soil. The product I chose (from Vevor) comes in a kit, 6 40×8" sections of bendable weathering steel, with matching connectors. You simply hammer them into the ground. For $56.99, I got exactly what I needed.

Here is the bed with edging, soil, plants, and top dressing:

These are the cacti I planted (right to left):

1× San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus macrogonus var. pachanoi)
4× Espostoa senilis

3× Totem pole cactqus (Lophocereus schottii monstrose)

3× Mexican fence post cactus (Lophocereus marginatus)

3× Espostoa mirabilis

8× Blue torch cactus (Pilosocereus azureus)

It’s not an earth-shaking improvement, but it does add a touch of beauty to a previously neglected spot.

My next post will be about this area:

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