 Are you wondering how to repot your cactus safely so your cactus and you are happy? This video is for you. Today I'm going to show you step by step how to repot your cactus safely so you don't get pricked. In order to know if our cactus needs repotting, I usually do two things. First, I check the size of the cactus. So as you can see this cacti look really big for their pots. This is a pretty good first sign that they need repotting. The second thing that I do is to look at the roots. So in order to look at them I'm just gonna put my protective gloves just so I protect my fingertips. So let's take it out and actually look at the roots. So as you can see for this one the roots are actually coming out of the pot. This is a pretty good sign that our cactus needs repotting. So let's get to see what we need. So the first thing that we will need to repot our cactus as you saw is our protective gloves. So make sure that you get some gloves that have some protection on your palm and the fingertips. This can be some rubber or something that is really thick so you can prevent being pricked. Then we will need our potting mix and this one you can actually get at the store a succulent and cacti potting mix or you can make your own. I'm actually using the one that I make at home. So this one actually has some sand and pearlite and of course it has some coconut water and warm castings. And I really like it because as you can see it's really soft and fluffy. So it's really good for my succulents. Of course you can get very creative with your potting mix as long as you put ingredients that are gonna raise the drainage and make it more soft and fluffy so you can protect the roots of your cacti. So for example we have some pumice here. This we can add to our potting mix and it will increase the drainage. And we have some sand here so this is actually the sand that I use for this potting mix and it will increase the drainage as well. On top of that we're gonna be using some small stones. So this one's I actually got in Tomb which is basically a home depot kind of here in Germany. And you can use these stones in many ways. I'm gonna show you how I use them for my cacti. And of course we're gonna have to have our new pots ready. So for the pots I would say two things. First make sure that your pot has some drainage holes at the bottom. This will prevent you from over watering your cacti. And second is the size of your pot. So I would recommend that you move your cactus to a pot that is one to two sizes bigger than the previous pot. This way your plant won't be too shocked in the new environment. And it will also help you to prevent over watering your cactus. Because if you move your cactus to a very big pot the roots are not going to be able to absorb all the water when you water it. And then it will be too much water for your plant. Now the first thing that we're going to do is to take our cactus out of the pot. So I'm just gonna try to pull it very carefully over here. Oh yeah so that was easy. And as you can see the roots are actually going around the potting mix here. Which is a very good sign that this cactus really needs a bigger pot. So what we're going to do is very gently try to remove the soil from these roots. And if the soil is good you can always add it to your mix. As you can see I'm almost massaging the soil out. Now one thing that I learned with summer rainbows is that if the roots get actually damaged it's okay all we need to do is that once we repot our cactus in the new pot we can wait a little bit before we water. So not watering right away but actually waiting two or three days. So we make sure that the roots are healed and they can actually take the water in so we don't overwater our cactus. So now I'm just gonna put the cactus I think is ready just over here. So you can wait for us while we prepare our new pot. So here we have our new pot. The first thing that I'm going to do is add these stones over here. I usually like to put some stones at the bottom of our pot. And this is to add an extra layer of drainage. So for this pot I think I'm going to add maybe one to two centimeters. Of course it depends on the size of your pot but you just want to make sure that you have some layer so you can have some drainage at the bottom. And now we will continue to add our potting mix just a little bit so our cacti can stand on the potting mix and not on the rocks. And we will add our cacti now very carefully right in the middle. So you can hold every one hand and then put some potting mix in the bottom. Then I like to add some rocks to the top of my mix just as a top dresser. And this will help us in two ways. First, it's a very nice decoration. It looks really beautiful. I really love how the rocks look with the terracotta pot and then the green of the cactus. But also it is really great when preventing our cacti from standing in wet soil or wet potting mix. Now with the second one I'm going to add another top dressing that I really like to use. So I'm just going to report it in one second and I'll be back. And now we will add our top dressing. So for this one I'm going to use this sand here. This is a size set sand that you can use in an aquarium. So you can get it in Amazon or in a pet store. And all we're going to do is add some sand. I'm going to mix it a little bit first. So I'm going to add some sand to my bowl here first. And I decided that I'm going to add some pumice to this one. It's almost sand because it's also very fine. So we're going to add some of this to our mix and we can mix now. It looks really pretty guys. And we're going to put it on our other cactus here. Whether we can hold our cactus still, especially with a cactus like this one that is very spiky, is with these guys right here. So they're really easy to use and I think they're very useful in these cases. So all we have to do is hold the cactus either by the spike or a little bit by the cactus itself. And then we can continue to add some of our pudding mix or our top dressing in this case. We can also use this tool to give the last touch. For example with our top dressing, just making sure that it's on the edge of our cactus. It's just more delicate. You know, I really like to experiment with different top dressings for my cacti. And this is because, I don't know, I really like to see different colors, different textures. And then I put them together and they really complement each other. So if you have any top dressing that you would like to use with your succulents or cacti, make sure to comment below so we can all learn together and I would love to see your combinations. And as always, I will see you in the next video. Okay, ciao!