Little did I know that I would one day have the opportunity to actually visit Khun Deaw in Bangkok and see his most impressive collection. That day came, thanks to Cora and Anna Purificacion, who made arrangements for the Philippine Cactus and Succulent Society to visit several of the best C&S growers in Bangkok.
When I first met Khun Deaw in his small stall at Chatuchak Market during Plant Day (Wednesday), I was impressed by his simple, unassuming nature. On that day, he was selling a number of his Mammillaria luethyi propagations. M. luethy is one of the newest discoveries in the mammillaria world, and easily one of its most impressive. It is definitely one of my favorites of all succulents; the challenge is how to grow it, and grow it well.
Khun Deaw has managed to produce multi-headed specimens on low-cut grafting stocks, which can be easily hidden from view once neatly potted and covered with a top dressing of gravel. I was quite impressed with his propagation techniques on this rare plant.
But I was even more impressed two days later, when we visited his home in the Bangkok suburbs. His two greenhouses are situated in front of his house. One, which I assumed was his first greenhouse, is sheltered in bubble plastic with screen sides. It was full to the brim with plants, necessitating the construction of a second greenhouse. This second facility used simple fiberglass roofing on a high ceiling. An electric fan at the center helped promote more airflow inside the greenhouse. This second greenhouse was also jam-packed with plants filling every suitable nook and cranny. Underneath the staging, Deaw was raising thousands of seedlings, all in enclosed plastic to foster increased humidity, which helps the germination process.
Among his seedlings were numerous rare Pseudolithos migiurtinus and astrophytum cultivars. What is particularly amazing about his collection is its utter cleanliness – all the plants are clean and well-grown with no grime on them (unlike many of our plants grown here in Metro Manila, which get dirty and prone to fading due to pollution in the air). The wool and spines on the plants are all sparkling, and yet Deaw’s home is just a block away from the main road where there was major roadwork and construction ongoing, producing tons of dust in the air. I asked him how he did this, and he showed me the sides of his greenhouse (the ones most closely facing the roadwork area) – they were covered in protective plastic to prevent dust from getting in. But by protecting his greenhouses this way, he also effectively increased the heat inside. Now, Bangkok is really hot, but it was a lot hotter inside Deaw’s greenhouses and his wards were loving it!
Deaw has a simple formula for success with his plants. His growing mix consists of 20 percent river sand, 50 percent coconut coir, 10 percent cow manure, 10 percent charcoal chips and 10 percent leaf-mold for the easier-to-grow, less-sensitive taxon like notocactus, gymnocalyciums, and discocacti. For the more water-sensitive genus like ariocarpus, he uses the above mix and to each part (by volume) of the above, he adds one more part of small-grained pumice to enhance the water-draining capabilities of his growing medium. To this mixture he adds slow-release fertilizer like osmocote.
Deaw waters his plants twice a week during the hot summer months, and once a week for the rest of the year. All his plants are grown in plastic, but the growing medium seems to dry out quickly because of the heat and air circulation. He gives his plants extra shading during the hot summer months, and removes this on cloudy, rainy days.
There was a lot to see and appreciate in Deaw’s greenhouses with their truly magnificent specimens all over the place. Discocacti and ariocarpus are growing literally like vegetables. Deaw is also an expert in grafting, and he uses this form of propagation to speed up the growth process of especially slow-growing plants like ariocarpus to great effect.
But the one plant that really astonished me, and which I had never seen or heard of before, was a plant of the newly discovered Astrophytum (Digitostigma) caput-medusae. Anna Purificacion pointed this out to me, and I just couldn’t believe it was an astrophytum. Its appearance is totally different, looking more like a form of leuchtenbergia with its long, narrow tubercles. But upon closer examination, one begins to see the similarities with astrophytum, namely, the body being covered in white felt. And the flowers are exactly like astrophytums. This was truly an astonishing plant for me, and I can only imagine the price of the specimen Deaw was growing. It was truly a treat to visit Deaw’s cactus greenhouses. Needless to say, the society members had a ball!