I just got a little cactus garden as shown here.. Was gone for work for a few days, came back and The stalk sown in the third picture had a split in the middle, and was almost falling off. it was planted right beside the aloe plant in picture 1, growing sideways over top of it. In the garden picture the open spot is where the aloe type plant was and the dead cactus was rooted in between it and the healthier stalks. As you can see the aloe is miscloured and almost bloated (-dont know how to describe, but very thin skinned). The thorn off the cacti cut the leaf and it just drained when I was transplanting them out of the garden pot. Is the aloe plant savable? Sorry I dont have better pictures. If anyone has any idea what the plant is and possibly what happened, I'm all ears. Also I don't really know what I should do to replant the healthy stalk (it was off the dead part). So help there would be greatly appreciated.
It is not a cactus, it is an Euphorbia (actually there are no cacti at all in that "cactus garden"). There are plenty of descriptions of how to root them on the Internet, for example here. I know very little about non-cactus succulents, and I cannot tell from the pictures + description what has happened. Are the dead parts soft and mushy?.
Ya, definitely mushy, even down to the bulb(?) of the root.. it just basically broke off in those pieces like nothing. And I'm still kinda new so thank you on the info (I did some reasearch and the only close picture I could find was a Corn Cob Euphorbia (Euphorbia mammillaris L.)) But I still can't find anything to help with the symptoms.. I think it could be waterlogged? the roots still seem healthy, but I guess I could be wrong and overlooking root-rot or something.. But then I cant understand why the other plants are healthy. And thats the other thing.. should the other plants from the same pot be ok? or should I have anything to worry about there? And also I havent found anything on the roots? could they produce another plant?
Root rot. It is possible that it has already spread to the part that looked healthy as well, it usually spreads along the center of the stem. You will soon find out ... Looks right to me (but I am not an expert, and the number of Euphorbia species is > 2000, some of them resemble mammillaris). That is the most probable reason, yes. Root rot does not always affect all plants in a bowl, but the risk increases if there is rotting tissue in the soil. The susceptibility differs too, some species are more sensitive than others. personally I don't keep different plants in the same bowl, they often have different watering needs (believe me, the people who assemble these "gardens" do not care about that), their roots entangle and the risk of disease transfer is higher. Signs of rot? I doubt that the roots are well, as I wrote above this kind of disease spreads very fast along the transport routes for water/nutrients inside the plants. I would not even bother to experiment with that unless it was a very valuable plant and the rot entered from the top (which happens sometimes).
Wow, thank you. I took the green part of the Euphorbia, it was kind of an offshoot of the rotten stem(with exception to where it was growing off of it it seemed to be fine). and am trying it in another pot, it looked like that's what the rotten one grew from in the first place.. In the third picture where the stalk is broken in the middle is where the (rot?) seemed to have started - it was fallen over itself there, it kind of looked like it was pinching off the head of the stalk. the rot didn't seem to go all the way down to the tip of the main root. Just below where it broke seemed firm and healthy.