Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Mario Wick
Email: mario.wick@web.de
Introduction
The graft of Gymnocalyciums is not an absolute
necessity. A great part of the species of this
South American genus grows perfectly well on its
own roots. Merely a couple of species with carrot
roots sometimes arouse on our (my) culture
conditions the impression, as though nature
provided the plants with a good water reservoir
and an effective carriage organ on gravel-like
and rocky subsoil, and put them in the position to
pull the aboveground body into the underground
in case of aridness - but sometimes you can't
help the impression that such roots are
obstructive for brisk growth.
Now it is surely not a goal of nature to produce
large quantities of biomass of the relatively small
and steady genus Gymnocalycium within a short
period of time. The collector however certainly
wants good growth and plentiful annual
blossoms. A further desire would be to quickly
obtain adults and flowerable plants from sowings
of new or rare specimen.
For the latter reason in particular, I began four
years ago to graft in each case 3-4 seedlings of a
sowing portion or a genus respectively on
Selenicereus grandiflorus. The remainder of the
seedlings has to be content with its own roots.
Rearing of the seedlings
The general procedure of the sowing and/or
further treatment of seedlings is described in
almost every book about cacti and is therefore
not covered here.
For my breeds, I use 5.5 cm deep salad bowls
from the supermarket and a substrate consisting
of 50% sieved, coarse-grained sand and 50%
normal, sieved flower earth containing turf.
The mixture is stewed for 90 minutes with 180C
in the baking-oven in a closed container.
They are sown after the cooling, then watered
and afterwards the containers are locked with the
respective well closing covers.
The sowing in my case takes place in October
with usually outstanding germinating rates.
into pots which contain the same -but unsiftedmixture used at the sowing, the scions being
placed approx. 5 cm deep into the earth. Stewing
does not take place. Afterward they are
thoroughly watered.
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fig. 9 Three years old former graft of G. bruchii var. niveum (WR
727).
fig. 11 G. hossei var. ferox (STO 11). Four years old graft of
immaculate beauty in a 12 cm pot.
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fig. 13 G. catamarcense (STO 1399), four years old graft. Seedling on its own roots standing in a 7 cm pot.
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