What's up everyone. Kevin from Epic Gardening here and today,
sitting in front of me,
sitting in front of you are two dragon fruit plants.
So we picked these up from a fellow gardener who just has this epic dragon fruit
farm and he gave us some cuttings. And I believe there's three different types.
You've got the red skin with the white fruit,
you've got the red skin with the red fruit,
and you have the yellow skin with the white fruit. According to this grower,
we have the red skin with the white fruit,
which is the most common type,
it's the one you're probably going to see in the grocery store.
And let me be honest with you guys,
these things are really expensive in the grocery store.
One dragon fruit can be something like $5 to $8 depending on where you're buying
it. So I figured, you know what? Why not try to grow these myself?
We got four of them,
but I gave my friend two and we're going to have the battle of the dragons.
I'm growing them my way. He's growing them his way.
I'll show you how he's doing it in a second.
But first I need to explain how I'm going to grow them.
And we're going to follow, this video is basically going to be from now today,
October 15th, 2018 until whenever I get my first fruit,
which who knows how long that's going to be.
So what do I know about the dragon fruit? Well, to be honest,
I didn't know that much until I went deep into the research. Right?
And so I was looking at, obviously you start with Wikipedia,
then you go everywhere else.
And I found some cultivators of dragon fruit that really gave me some really
good tips. So here is what I learned.
As far as soil and containers go. I went big.
So I don't know what my friend is doing,
but I went with a very large 20 gallon container with some drainage holes at the
bottom and I'll explain why in a second. But let's talk about soil.
You would think it being a cactus, it would need cactus mix. Not quite.
It does really like a really nutrient rich soil that happens to be well
draining.
So what I'm probably going to do is I have some vegetable mix that we picked up
from the local nursery.
And I'm going to probably mix in maybe a third of cactus mix in that to make
sure that the moisture, that all the water actually does drain out,
but that there's a good amount of nutrition in the soil.
So that's what I'm doing as far as my container, as far as my soil.
Likewise, you would think, again,
being a cactus that it would love absolute blasting sun as much as it can
possibly get. Uh, not quite. It does like a little bit of shade cover.
If you're going to grow it in maybe a desert region,
then you're going to have a rough time just putting it directly into the sun.
Uh, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to locate it in a place,
at least in my climate here in 10b,
but it's certainly not a true desert out here.
And so I think especially as we're going into the winter season right now,
I'm going to just place it in a container in my front yard and it's going to get
mostly full sun. I think it will be okay,
but maybe once it gets towards the summer,
I'm going to move it into an area that might just get a little break during the
heat of the day. But that's only for the summer. So that's quite a ways away.
Temperature wise it's gonna want pretty much mild to moderate temperatures.
It can survive a light frost,
but it certainly is not going to like it and it can survive up to and above a
hundred degrees Fahrenheit. But it's also not going to like that too much.
So I think where I am in zone 10b,
that's going to be a nice sweet spot of that nice Mediterranean climate, 70,
80 degrees, 85 degrees at most.
And then probably the coldest it'll ever get here is probably 55 degrees,
50 degrees. So perfectly fine on temperature.
Now when it comes to fertilization, I read a lot of conflicting reports.
So one theory was that being that it's an epiphytic plant,
that maybe a lot of the roosting birds in the trees were one of its main sources
of fertility,
besides that organic leaf litter that sort of collects in the nooks and crannies
of the tree. It turns out maybe this is true, maybe it's not,
I don't really know.
But it turns out that as your plant is going into a blossoming phase,
you're going to want to give it a 1-1-2 high in that potassium because that's
what it's going to need during that budding phase.
But if it's in the grow phase,
you're going to go 2-1-1 high nitrogen to put out a lot of that vegetative
growth. So that seems pretty standard.
And keep in mind all those numbers are quite low.
And so it's not gonna require a whole lot provided you have some well draining
soil at the start.
So in researching how to best grow this plant and how to beat my friend in the
battle of the dragons, we're competing, like I said.
I looked at how people grow it commercially because that's going to be one big
clue as to the most efficient way to grow a plant at scale.
So in Southeast Asia where this is heavily cultivated, you'll see a lot of,
well they do it inground, so I don't, I'm not going to do it in ground.
But you'll see a lot of middle pole where they grow many cuttings at once and it
goes up the pole and then it kind of spills out over kind of like a floppy
hairdo. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my two plants,
this one's a bit longer than the other. As you can see,
I'm sort of supporting the weight of this one right here. Um, but that's fine.
They can take a little bit of bending, a little bit of abuse.
I'm going to plant them in this with the mix that I talked about before and then
I'm going to put a rod down the middle. So I'm going to put something,
what I learned is they don't really like to climb up certain surfaces.
So like very smooth surfaces or even a sort of a chemically treated wood,
they're not going to like to climb up that. So I might get an old broomstick,
I might get like a metal pole,
but this is deep enough that I can just shove that in the soil and then I can
use some wraps or some cloth or whatever to tie it up as it grows up.
So that's what we're going to do right now. We're going to fill this up,
we're going to transplant in and then later on and as the video progresses we're
going to see exactly how it's growing.
So I've got my cactus mix right here and I have a premixed vegetable mix that's
got perlite, compost, some peat moss, some other good stuff in there.
And I'm just going to dump all of this in and then fill with this and mix it in
as I go.
So we've got our mix. Like I said, it's about one third cactus mix,
two thirds veggie style mix, like a nice compost, peat moss,
perlite. You can see pretty loose, pretty well draining, hopefully.
And we're going to go ahead and transplant it in now.
Let's take a look at the root systems as we pull these out here.
And when you do this,
I like to kind of squeeze the edges first and then turn it upside down like
gravity, do the work instead of pulling.
That way you can get some of the roots that have gone through the drainage holes
to slide out evenly. Roots look okay.
These are obviously a little dried and dead, but that's okay.
We're going to break that up a little bit and we can see it looks like this.
There might be a bit more sand in the mix that I was given than the mix that I
have here, but that's okay.
And what I'm going to do is lay these out and figure out how to place these,
cause remember we're going to want a pole of some sort coming up through here,
which I do not have right now.
So I got to transplant with that in mind. So let's take this other one,
which is the longer one and also kind of a misshapen one.
Let's see if we can make this one work though.
I think normally what people will do is they'll plant many more than just two,
but I only have two. So that's what we're going to plant.
Let's take a look at these roots.
This is much more rootbound obviously because it's a more established,
bigger plant. So I'm going to break up these bottom roots just a little bit,
just so the roots know that they're in a new place and they can go somewhere
else.
Because they'll keep growing in the pattern that they're stuck in if you don't
do that. Uh, I believe Laura from Garden Answer,
I think she calls it root memory.
I'm not sure if there's a botanical name or term for that,
but it sure seems to work for me.
So I'm going to break up some of these roots and we're going to go in and
transplant in to the system.
So what I'll do here is I'm going to do the smaller one first.
I'm going to put it,
I'm going to do this one facing this way and this one facing this way,
and then I'll use cloth to gently pull them back towards the middle rather than
planting them this way where they kind of crisscross.
I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense.
So let's go ahead and dig this part out. Nice
well draining mix. We'll get it in there.
And I'm really excited guys.
I mean I think a lot of people don't really like the flavor of dragon fruit.
I personally love it. Um, they think it's too bland. I don't know.
To me it's like a mild kiwi, which I think is a fantastic flavor.
So I'm excited to grow that. Alright,
so I've broken up these roots a little bit. We're going to plant this one here,
maybe just slightly deeper. It's pretty hearty,
like it can take a little abuse as far as planting goes, I've noticed.
Okay, so that one's in just right offset from the center.
And then this one's going to go in to the other side of it.
Let's go over here.
I need to go just a bit deeper. There we go.
Bury that root ball on both of them.
And there we have it everyone. One thing I,
one thing I am going to do is add just a little support for now on this one so
it doesn't bend over the, it's own weight.
We'll do that for now until we get the pole in the middle to support it,
but let's go ahead and water this in.
So I've got what I think is a pretty cool spot for this dragon fruit,
at least for now.
This is my front yard garden and the sun comes across throughout the day,
just like this.
Never does it ever shade this part of the day out or this part of the balcony
out unless it's actually dark. So I think we're in a good spot and look at this.
We have a little bit of protection and support for this longer one as it's
growing until I get my little wooden stake and start tying up and so that's
pretty cool. Let's go ahead and figure out what my roommate and friend...
Now let's see what my friend has been doing with his dragon fruit.
Let's take a look at the soil. It looks like he's gone a bit more,
I see some sand in there,
so it looks like he's got a bit more cactusy mix than I have.
Certainly has them in smaller pots right now and he's growing them separately.
So an interesting decision. We'll see how it works. Like I said,
we're not really, we're not, it's not like a life or death competition,
but it's gonna be interesting to see what happens. Well,
I hope you guys enjoyed episode one of the battle of the dragons. Uh,
let me know who you think is going to do better.
If you have any tips on growing dragon fruit, like I said,
I haven't grown it before. This is all based on just research off the internet,
sharing it with you guys. So let me know if you have any tips.
If you think my system is kinda messed up, you think I'm doing something dumb,
let me know in the comments. I'm always learning just like everyone else.
So thank you for watching. Stay tuned and I'll see ya on the next video.
Peace out.