Should I buy a cactus cutting online?  Well it depends.  We only sell healthy, live, rooted and viable cacti and succulents at The Cactus Outlet.  In addition to providing the best looking cacti and succulents available online, we always want to ensure the success of our customers to the best of our abilities.  That starts with sending our customers healthy cacti and succulents with roots.  Cacti cuttings of any kind are not viable plants until they have roots.  We will not and do not sell cacti cuttings.   

Cacti cuttings can be bought much cheaper than our rooted healthy cactus plants, but cheaper prices come with a catch.  As the new owner of any cactus cutting it is your job to root it in.  Rooting in a cactus cutting is not a sure thing by any means.  We propogate some of our cacti via cuttings and we do not have a 100% success rate as professional growers.  Our success rate varies between 70-90% depending on the species we are propogating.  It can take us anywhere from six months to a year to root in specimens with enough roots to sell.  Rooting in cacti cuttings takes proper sunlight, soil and eventually water.      

If growers have a 70-90% success rate with all the knowledge and optimum growing conditions, what do you think your success rate may be with your newly purchased cactus cutting? 

In our experience, an owner of a new columnar cactus cutting has at best a 50% success rate in rooting it in.  Newly potted cacti cuttings will look good without roots for weeks and perhaps months.  If your cutting is not actively producing roots during this time your cutting will eventually rot and die. 

Selling cacti cuttings can be a good business.  You sell a product to a customer and by the time it rots and dies the customer believes it is something they have done to kill it.  User error definitely occurs, but this is generally not the case.  As a purchaser of a cheaper columnar cactus cutting you were never given the inside growers scoop as to why purchasing the cutting may have been a poor choice to start with. 

Purchasing cacti cuttings online may be a good choice for some with the proper experience, knowledge and time required to root them in.  For everyone else that doesn't want to gamble on whether or not a cactus cutting roots in and becomes a viable plant, The Cactus Outlet is here to serve you.