We Took the Takeaway Tek and Made it Better

When youre first starting to explore growing cacti from seeds you'll inevitably come across the widely used “takeaway tek”. There are hundreds of videos explaining this on Youtube and we even wrote a guide ourselves. Go check that out for a full explanation, but it’s exactly what it sounds like: using a cheap clear plastic food container as a humidity chamber to germinate seeds.

It works, kind of. We've used it ourselves plenty of times. But it also has one major flaw that catches out heaps of beginners: water control.

Cactus seeds need high humidity to germinate, but they don’t want wet soggy soil either. In takeaway containers, there’s no drainage and therefore no buffer. So if you add too much water at the beginning (which is easy), you get soggy soil, fungus, and rotting seedlings. Too little and they either don’t germinate, or they sprout and die off just as you're starting to get excited. You’re left second-guessing yourself, fiddling with the water levels, trying to ‘dial it in’, which often just makes things worse.

Whilst trial and error is a normal and fun part of any hobby, when you’re dealing with slow-growing, often expensive cactus seed, that trial and error can be a bit brutal and discouraging for beginners. You’re investing months of time and energy, and one small misstep can set you right back to square one. If you’re active on cactus growing sub-reddits or Facebook groups you’ll see almost daily posts from newcomers that have cooked this supposedly simple step and set themselves up for failure.

So we built something that fixes that, not because the takeaway tek is “wrong,” but because there’s a better way.

What We Changed

We designed our Cactus Grow Kit to primarily address that water/humidity issue we see most beginners struggle with.

The grow tray comes in two parts, a solid bottom tray and a mesh insert. The mesh tray holds the soil above the water line by resting on two ledges built into the base tray. Excess moisture drains through naturally, and the water sitting in the base tray, combined with the high-quality humidity dome, keeps the humidity consistent without waterlogging the soil.

It means you don’t have to guess, adjust, or stress. Just check the base tray occasionally to make sure there is a little water in there and let gravity and capillary action do the rest.

Other Improvements

• Dome Height: The lid’s tall enough to let your seedlings hang around for longer before needing to be potted up.

• Durability: It’s reusable and properly made, not a takeaway tub that warps in the sun. We could have produced a cheaper soft plastic option but we’d rather sell less of them and make sure they actually last.

• Proper Soil & top dressing: We include our own specially formulated cactus soil mix and a Golden Maifan Stone top dressing, two topics which are also huge hurdles for beginners. You can buy those on their own too, if that’s all you’re after, or you need a refill.

Exisiting propagators

Some people will be quick to point out that other propagation units already existed like the one pictured here.

The per unit cost to produce one of these is WAY less than our unit, so believe us, we wished they were good. But they simply suck for cacti.

Whilst they might be suitable for other types of plants, cacti roots like to stretch our far and wide. Germinating cacti in these cells has always lead to stunted growth in our experiments.

Secondly, the grow cells sit directly in the base tray with no real gap, so any excess water does drain down, but then the base of the cells are sitting directly in the water which isn’t ideal. For cacti germination you want high humidty, but not water logged soil.

And thirdly, they’re made of cheap soft plastic, you’d be lucky to get 1 or 2 growing seasons in the Australian sun out of these before they crack and warp.

The Solution We Couldn’t Find, So We Made It

You can absolutely grow cacti in a takeaway container if that’s your thing. If you enjoy the DIY approach, go for it! We're not here to gatekeep cactus cultivation or claim our kit is the only way to do it. We simply set out to create something more forgiving, especially for beginners or anyone who wants to eliminate a few variables.

When we first began developing the kit, we didn’t plan on designing the propagation unit from scratch. We assumed there’d be something on the market that would work well with our soil and seeds for a clean, all-in-one setup. But nothing we found quite hit the mark, so we built our own.

If you're tired of gambling with precious cactus seeds and waiting months, only to end up with rot or shriveled seedlings, this kit is for you.

Watch the video below to see a demo of the kit being setup to get a better idea of how it all looks and works.