Virginia Morris made available a number of handy guides in pdf format. These are the following topics:
The Top 3 Mistakes People Make When Growing Cacti
Cactus, Agave, Yucca and Ocotillo
Cactus pruning tools
Propagate agaves and cacti
How to transplant a cactus
Problems and pests of agave, aloe, cactus and yucca

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Ad Konings sorted out the amounts of vinegar to add to your El Paso tap water in order to get the proper amount of acidity that your desert plants need, i.e. water with a pH of 5.8. You'll need 4.5 tablespoons of (5%) vinegar per 5 gallons of tap water. If you get water from the Ft Bliss desalination plant you need only one third of that. To fertilize your plants (once a month in the growing seasons, i.e. Feb-May and Sep-Nov) I made a 100 times concentrated stock solution as follows: dissolve 140 grams of ammonium sulfate and 120 grams of general fertilizer 20-20-20 in 1.35 liter of vinegar and add water to one gallon. This is a 100x concentrated fertilizer/acidity adjuster. Take a 1/3 cup of this concentrate for each two-gallon watering can. If anybody needs some of this concentrate I can bring a 2-liter bottle to the meeting which is good for 50 gallons of plant water. I bought the vinegar in a one-gallon jug from Albertsons.

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At the beginning of the month our club received a scoping letter for the Sun Valley flood damage reduction project from Dana Price of the US Army Corps of Engineers, Albuquerque. In the letter was explained that west of Rt 54 an area the size of about 150 acres was considered to be "developed" to stem flooding of the built up area on the other side of the highway. The actual construction is still 2-3 years away but at this stage they were trying to identify issues and concerns regarding the plans and if there were any alternative plans suggested. Since the area is restricted to military personnel, with metal detectors because of unexploded ordnance, it would have been impossible to scout the area on our own and see what cactus and other plants would be lost when construction begins. Therefore Dana Price organized a survey and Ad Konings was allowed to join her party on Thursday 14th July. He found the following cacti:
1   Coryphantha macromeris var. macromeris
2   Coryphantha scheeri
3   Cylindropuntia leptocaulis
4   Echinocactus horizonthalonius
5   Echinocereus dasyacanthus
6   Echinocereus fendleri var. fendleri
7   Echinocereus viridiflorus var. chloranthus
8   Ferocactus wislizeni (about 50% survived the February freeze)
9   Mammillaria grahamii var. grahamii (less than 10% survived the freeze)
10 Opuntia camanchica
11 Opuntia cyclodes
12 Opuntia discata
13 Opuntia engelmannii
14 Opuntia macrocentra
15 Opuntia phaeacantha
16 Sclerocactus intertextus var. dasyacanthus

Not seen but likely present:
17 Echinocereus coccineus var. rosei

Photos of all these species (environment, plant, spination, flower, fruit) can be viewed here
Apart from Coryphantha scheeri (sometimes C. robustispina var. scheeri) none of the other cacti are rare.

Virginia Morris and Ad composed a letter with comments, concerns, and a request that if construction had to commence that the EPCRC would be willing and ready to rescue the plants. Virginia will have a copy of the sent letter at the next meeting if you are interested.

Jacques Barriac, Dan Miller, Gertrud and Ad Konings went to check out the damage done by OroGrande Iron Ore Co., LLC at the Cinco de Mayo mine in the Jarilla Mountains. Click here to see a large photo of the gash they have made in the mountain. Earlier we found out that the mountain to be "blown up and sold to China" (illegally) was just a little more than half a mile away from our favorite spot to see the hybrid claret cup. If you want to know exactly where the mine is click here (mine is at the green arrow). There is now a wide and level road all the way to the mine which can be driven on by a regular vehicle. Unfortunately we found that the type of habitat is the same as that found at our favorite claret cup spot and the mountain side, for as much it was still there or not covered by rubble, had many cacti. Besides the claret cup cactus 50-100 year old haystack cacti (Echinocereus stramineus) were plentiful. We have made a short slideshow, which can be seen here, of the type of cacti found near the mine.
The Las Cruces chapter of the Native Plant Society of New Mexico has drafted a letter to the BLM and the New Mexico Mining and Mineral Devision (our club should do the same) to point out the unique situation regarding the hybrid claret cup cacti.

Daniel Miller first heard the story of a mining company blowing up a part of the Jarilla Mountains near Orogrande, NM. in order to mine magnetite (a kind of iron oxide) and ship it to China. He also found an article about a 10-year old girl (successfully) fighting the mining company and the GPS coordinates of the mountain that was going to be blown to dust. It appeared that the mountain was less than 1 kilometer away from  the prime spot for the hybrid claret cup cactus in the Jarillas. After Gertrud Konings sent a message about this bad news to everyone on her list of  environmentalists she called Virginia Morris who has experience with BLM (the Jarillas are BLM land) and mining procedures. Virginia quickly found a more complete article on the matter and fortunately found out that the mining company did not have the required paperwork to blow up a piece of the US and ship it to China. You can read the articel, originally by Elva Osterreich from the Alamogordo Daily News, here.