What would be the best way to keep a cerrado species alive?

[Adam8aTexas]

At first it seemed discouraging that cerrado species needed specific acidities and water, and that they have a large amount of potassium nitrogen and phosphate. But I still want to try! 
What are your recommendations for keeping a cerrado species alive?

[Mango Stein]

I don't listen to Elton John. I only listen to the wise words of Helton Josue. He is the real rocket man when it comes to fast growth of cerrado species. He told me that he was surprised to learn that the secret was to never use sand as part of the substrate, even though it seems counter-intuitive to savanna soil physiology.

So goodbye yellow sand road. Sacrifice. It's the circle of life.

[Adam8aTexas]

Thanks! I’ll use everything except for sand, maybe vermiculite, perlite, and a good fertilizer to boost nitrogen.

[K-Rimes]

From my experience, none of them really like frequent water. I basically only sprinkle them with water. All of them that I watered normally (when the pots are dry and light) didn't like that so now I keep them basically 95% dry and just barely sprinkle water on them when they're showing stress.

They don't like a lot of attention

[Epicatt2]

It they're like many of the orchids which are native to the Brazilian serrados then they get most of their water from fogs that settle on them and dampen the leaves down during the nighttime.

OK — HTH

Paul M.
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[Adam8aTexas]

From my experience, none of them really like frequent water. I basically only sprinkle them with water. All of them that I watered normally (when the pots are dry and light) didn't like that so now I keep them basically 95% dry and just barely sprinkle water on them when they're showing stress.

They don't like a lot of attention

Might be best for maybe a tablespoon(?) of water at best, just enough to keep their tops a bit moist then

[K-Rimes]

From my experience, none of them really like frequent water. I basically only sprinkle them with water. All of them that I watered normally (when the pots are dry and light) didn't like that so now I keep them basically 95% dry and just barely sprinkle water on them when they're showing stress.

They don't like a lot of attention

Might be best for maybe a tablespoon(?) of water at best, just enough to keep their tops a bit moist then

My usual watering is to water for a few seconds with the hose or a watering can, trying not to have *too much* water drain out the bottom, but that happens a lot on water lovers like jaboticaba and such. With these, I will wait till they are basically 100% dry and then I'll water them so little that nothing comes out the bottom. I think that's about the best you can do for container growing. Joe Hewitt has a lot of them in the ground in Hawaii, this said, and they get absolutely drenched and they seem to like it. I think having them in pots makes them very sensitive to root rot, water drains better in soil and I think there is some fungi/bacterial balance that makes this not as problematic.

[Guanabanus]

Probably there is some dependence on mycorrhizae and beneficial soil bacteria.

I don't know if any of the soil micro-organism mixes that are available here have relevant species.

Possibly there is a need for traces of Cobalt, Nickel, Selenium, Aluminum....  Northeastern Brazil used-to adjoin central-western Africa, where many soils are rich in heavy metals.  I haven't seen any info about comprehensive soil testing in the cerrado.