How To Root Cereus Hildmannianus

How Do I Root Cereus Hildmannianus

Cutting Preparation

To start with, you need at least a tiny piece of Cereus cutting to do this. How big it should be? From my experience, even a rib cut of 1-3 cm could root and grow into a decent cactus but it will take forever though. 

Let say, you fetched a nice newly sprouted,  2-3 feet long Cereus; is that a good cutting to root?  Some would say yes, I would say go for it too; but if you have other choices then you better cut older tip and thicker rib to get a decent cut. Older Cereus tip cutting withstands long period of dryness pretty well compared to younger  tip. 

Mature Cereus cuttings. Top cutting is 2 feet long and bottom one is 4 feet. 

Tip cut vs Mid cut, which one is better? I prefer Tip cut when rooting Cereus for grafting as a root-stock, but at the same time will also root Mid cut to further produce more cuttings in the future. To be honest, they root at the same rate if they are same size anyway. 

September 2019 cuttings. A mix of Mid and Tip cuttings. Tallest is 5 feet tall. 

My advice is, get a big and thick cut of Cereus, anything bigger than 20 cm tall and 10 cm width will grow pretty quick. My personal choice will always be 2 feet or taller Cereus with thickness of between 12 to 20 cm for tip cut. I will root any Mid cut that is taller than 1 feet but must be thicker than 15 cm. And they must be mature which means their rib is thick and plump. Mature Cereus will be dark green color while young one will be blue to greenish blue and their ribs are soft and floppy.

Mature cutting with thick ribs. 

Mature Cereus tip, they are dormant but will quickly resume growth once rooted. 

Future grafting stocks. Their core/cambium ring are still soft and not fibrous yet even though they are dormant for a long time based on their color and thickness. 

Can you root into dirt right after cutting them off mother plant? Yes! Getting them dry between 3-14 days works too. They are pretty tough even you can root them on the same day as long as you do not over water them in acidic waterlogged media, lol. Best bet would be to let then dry in around 3 days, do not went too long or they will lose more water. 

 Rooting media and cleaned cuttings. 

Thorn removal is my way of cleaning and controlling their growth, you will see others do the same on their Cereus root stock.  Depending on individuals, some people remove thorns all the way to the growth point while other might keep all areoles intact. I prefer to remove 6-10 areoles on all ribs at the bottom part of my cuttings. It helps in controlling side-shoots coming from underground. Plus it helps with handling as I do not wear glove most of the time. 

Cuttings are tied onto stakes to induce proper rooting and ease of management. 

Make sure you put Cereus cutting under shaded area, it would be nice if you put them on top of sandy soil too in case you might be busy and forgot about them later. Though pain and mistakes, I would highly advice anyone who want to grow Cereus to root them under shade. Generally speaking, Cereus roots pretty quick under optimum temperature and moisture but tend to delay root growth if they are too dehydrated and sun burnt.

 A mix of 1:1 oil palm decomposed sludge with local top soil is used as growing media. 

Poly-bags are used as plastic pots replacement. All the cuttings will be moved to plastic pots once they are grafted later on. 

This is due to their morphology that contain lots of water, that is why they could grow extremely fast once established. Even wrinkled dried cuttings could pop out pups but it usually really small and slow to growth at start. Therefore, to root and grow your Cereus cutting into a giant, go with big, mature cutting that is hardened under shade and water them well. 

Growing Media

Cereus could almost anywhere in my country but they prefer to grow in well drained soil. Obviously, high organic content with moderate soil water holding capability proven to produce huge Cereus in my garden. They can get rot from highly acidic soil what over retain water. 

My options on media composition usually consist of:

Option 1: 100% decomposed cow or goat dung

Option 2: 60-80% of Option 1 and river sand

Option 3: 50% decomposed oil palm sludge and 50% local top soil

Option 4: 50% decomposed cow/goat dung or oil palm sludge, 40% coco peat and 10% river sand. 

All in all, as long as the media could retain and drain water well, Cereus will grow as they are not very picky. But do not go into full mineral media, they require lots of organic as they are fast growing cactus. 

Watering

Cereus loves water compared to other cactus, they could spread like weeds in tropical country while other cactus are struggling from rot and disease. 

Having said so, I water well established Cereus every day up to once a week if I am too busy. Hence I went with a bit porous media, I spend my time watering them and ensuring that they get plump. You can grow them without much caring too, but I always aim for extra fast growth and strong root-stock. 

Mammylaria grafted onto Cereus stock. Huge plump stock often perform well on scion growth. 

Now we are more or less done with rooting Cereus. Next I will share about Cereus Grafting. 

This guy grow from 12 inch cutting into 9 feet giant in 2 years.