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Cultivation

Growing Huachuma

Huachuma grows from cuttings, so a harvest can leave more plants standing than it started with.

This is the part of the work anybody with one cactus can take up.

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A person crouching to press soil around a small cactus set inside a ring of stones, a hoe lying on the ground beside them

  1. One

    A column grows for years.

    Three mature Huachuma columns standing in front of a red adobe wall

  2. Two

    A length of it is cut.

    A person kneeling in the garden holding a cut Huachuma segment against their chest, planted cuttings around them

  3. Three

    The cutting is planted, and it roots.

    A spined blue green Huachuma cutting standing in dry earth, a second cutting planted behind it

Cut in Thirds one method

One grower on the Foundation’s podcast described the way he does it. A column is grown to at least three feet before anything is taken from it, and then it is cut in three. The bottom foot stays in the ground and grows back. The middle is what becomes medicine. The top is planted, and it roots.

So the cut ends with two plants where there was one, and the ground it came out of is never left empty. That is the case for growing rather than buying.

Cultivation has a literature, and Keeper Trout’s notes at troutsnotes.com set out other ways. What a plant can spare depends on its age, its species and where it is standing, and growers work to their own timings.

“You want it to get at least three feet before you cut it. And the idea is you leave a foot on the bottom to regenerate. You use the middle for ceremony and you plant the tip.”

Nathan Tinder
at least three feet the top the middle the bottom foot two plants where there was one grows back planted, and it roots
A column of at least three feet, cut in three: the bottom foot grows back, and the top is planted and roots.

From a Cutting seed and cutting

Huachuma can be raised from seed and it is slow, exacting work. The seedlings need years of attention before they can look after themselves, which is why almost nobody starts a garden that way.

A drawing of Huachuma grown from seed, from left to right: the top of a grown stem with two fruits on its side, one whole, scaled and hairy with its withered flower on its tip, the other burst open to show white flesh full of small black seeds. Then a few seeds drawn larger, and four seedlings at successive ages, from a tiny round body with two seed leaves to a small young column

From the fruit to the seedlings.

A cutting is a whole plant already. A length of column set in the ground roots and grows on, and what grows is the same plant it came from. A great deal of the Huachuma standing in gardens in the United States is one cultivar propagated like this over and over, which is why so many of those plants are, genetically, the same cactus.

In the United States it is legal to cultivate every one of these species as an ornamental garden plant, and there are communities of growers who will help you start.

A drawing of a Huachuma cutting planted in the ground, its first roots growing down into the soil

Get a Cutting

The first question people ask about this plant is usually where to buy it. A better one is where to get a cutting. Growers pass them between themselves, and the grower who gave the protocol above says he gives most of his own away.

Looking after one is a relationship with the plant on its own terms.

In Huachuma Wisdom, the Foundation’s own community, growing is talked about as one of the biggest spiritual practices with this medicine.

“You don’t always have to be drinking and ingesting the medicine to start building a relationship and learning from it.”

Dani Reardon
A Huachuma cutting growing in a pot among pink and white geraniums against a rendered wall

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