Dragon fruit may be an easy plant to care for but, at the end of the season,
there are a few critical things you can do to set them up for success come
spring. It is your boy, Kevin Espiritu, also known as dragon daddy K here.
You guys know I am in love with dragon fruit. I absolutely love them!
I've planted six this year.
I've grown them up lovingly here at the Epic Homestead and set them up for a
really big fruiting season in 2022.
And so fall is here and there are some crucial things that will give them a
headstart on that spring season,
including some tips at the end of this video for preventing the dreaded cactus
rust.
So cultivate that Like button and I will boost the growth of your dragon fruit
cuttings by 242%. And let's get into the video. Tip
number one is going to be starting out with just a visual inspection and
overview of your dragon fruit. So what do you notice?
Now on this particular plant, this is Ecuador Palora, the yellow variety,
I'm seeing some really nice, healthy stem pieces. Not a lot of spotting,
not a lot of disease. As we go up here,
still kind of the same thing holds,
but let's come back over here and take a look at this one. This is red Laverne.
Now this one, I am seeing a little bit of an issue.
So there's a little spotting on this low stem chunk.
That spotting seems to continue as we go up the plant here.
And then once we get to the top, we've got some good growth.
So I don't see too many issues,
but just make note of what you see and see if you can troubleshoot.
Now that we have taken a look at our plants and we have a good sense of the
shape of them, if there's any issues,
let's talk about shaping and scaping the dragon fruit before fall comes.
Because they're going to go dormant in the fall.
And so it doesn't make sense to have a bunch of stem pieces that aren't going to
produce something that we want in the spring.
So let's take a look at this one here. This is the one that we looked at last.
I've done a pretty good job of training this upwards.
And you can watch an earlier video to see what this looked like beforehand,
because it wasn't even above this top here. So what I'm looking for now is,
do I see any little offshoots that are trying to form way down here that aren't
going to be productive?
Because if let's say this starts to sprout right here and it starts to come out
like this,
unless I'm going to commit to pulling this all the way up through this trellis
top, it's not really a good use of the plant's energy.
So as I'm looking at this plant, I don't really see too much.
The only thing that could be an issue is this guy right here.
But I actually think that this guy has a good chance of making it up here with
tip number three. As a quick tip,
anything that's above this square top trellis,
if you're using one of these designs like this, this, this, this,
this - if it's branching like crazy up here, that's perfect.
You want it to do that and then start falling down.
So don't take any of these off. Just take off the ones down below.
Before we get to tip number three though,
here's an example of one that as fall approaches, you do want to take off.
This is sugar dragon, fantastic variety, but this is just not going to make it.
It's going out this way. It's low. There's a larger piece
that's shooting straight up over here. And if I cut this off,
I'm not going to be doing anything but a favor to this plant. And bonus,
I can just propagate this. You have a whole video on how to propagate.
This one over here, also probably not a good use of this plant's energy,
especially as we move into fall. So go through,
take a scan and see if you see any of these wayward stems and take those off.
Now onto tip number three.
So tip number three is a close cousin to tip number two,
and it is to tie up any stems you do want to push forward
in spring and get all the way up through the top of that canopy.
And so you can see this variety here is extremely prolific. This is my friend,
Richard's from graftingdragonfruit, own cultivar.
It's called sour patch kid. I haven't had it fruit yet.
I'm very excited to have it fruit. But you can see this one is quite prolific.
It wants to throw a lot of side stems out and I've decided instead of pruning
them all off, I'm going to force them all to come up.
And so what you see here is a mixture of a couple of different types of nursery
tape. I'm going to link this one.
I really like this one and it sounds kind of nitpicky, but honestly,
when you find a product in the garden you really like, you really like it.
And you don't want to use anything else. This has a bit of a stretch to it.
It kind of adheres to itself slightly. It's nice and tight when you tie it.
But anyways, what you'll want to do is come around.
I like to come around the actual stem juncture points here cause they tend to be
a little more woody. Although, as you can see,
you can completely just tie it right around the stem at any point in time.
Dragon fruit's kind of nice because they have this sort of ridged slope to it.
And if you put it in one of the crevices,
it's a great little anchor point to pull it all in and shoot it straight up.
So if you don't remember,
you need it to come up to fall down to produce a lot of flowers and a lot of
fruit. So I'd come through and give all your plants a nice tie-up.
If it's getting to be fall and you're starting to see small buds start to form
on your dragon fruit, it's a good time to sadly remove them.
So here's a good example, albeit kind of weird,
where the stem deliberately started to grow downwards instead of falling down
with gravity, kind of a funky little look there.
But what you would see is you'd see some flower buds forming here.
And if you see those in fall, pluck them off because it's going to be, oh,
I don't know,
maybe a couple of weeks before they open and start to flower and pollinate.
And then once that happens,
you have at least about 40 days before they produce a fruit.
And by then you're in deep fall, early winter. It's not going to work out.
So on the same vein of pruning off unproductive stems,
you're going to want to take off late producing fruit.
This next tip is optional, but I personally recommend it very highly.
In the fruiting season,
especially as you transition towards flowering and fruiting,
generally you want to hit it with a liquid organic fertilizer cause it's more
bioavailable. You see I have a bag of Espoma's Garden-tone here.
This is an organic,
granular fertilizer because we're moving into the dormant season.
We don't need a ton of fertilizer,
but a nice slow release one buried underneath the mulch that can
really work. So I've got this micro bark mulch here.
I'm just going to move that to the side in a bucket and then I'll apply some
fertilizer and water that in.
And that's probably all I'll give throughout the fall season.
The beauty of organics is that you really can be a little bit heavy handed with
your fertilizer because it's going to be a slow release.
It has to break down for the plants to be able to use it in the first place.
So I'm going to give this a healthy dusting and then we will cover it back up
with the micro bark.
Our last step here is to apply a bit of water.
So good to do this before you've watered the dragon fruit. And we're moving on.
This tip is optional but in your early scan,
if you did see some early signs of cactus rust,
then I would recommend once/twice a month doing something with a neem oil
spray. We just did a video on this.
So what you want to do is take maybe a couple of milliliters of neem,
cold pressed neem oil. Not some dish soap,
but just some normal classic soap like a Dr. Bronner's, and then warm water.
So that's what I have in here. You can watch the whole video if you want to.
And then once a week come through and actually coat
the entire surface of all of the stems.
And what this is going to do is it's going to help cut down on cactus rust,
especially throughout the dormant winter season.
It can be a little more moist at that point in time.
And so I like to come through and just do this to every single one of my plants,
maybe once or twice a month.
If you are an adventurous gardener and you're growing dragon fruit in a colder
zone, then you do have to think about bringing it indoors.
So I highly recommend for your colder zone growers,
you probably should already be growing it in a container.
About 20 inch wide in diameter, roughly the size of the ones that I have.
And I have a video on the dragon fruit trellis that talks about the container as
well. But you'll want to move it indoors.
I have a dolly because these things can get pretty heavy.
But if it gets about 45 degrees Fahrenheit or lower routinely in your
area, you want to protect it in the winter.
Because what'll happen is these stems will start to freeze and get a little
frost damage, which will burst the cells.
And they'll get all mushy and start to rot. And then come spring they're way,
way behind what a more protected and cared for dragon fruit would be.
So definitely bring it indoors. You can supplement with light if you want.
It's not going to do a whole lot for the plant,
especially during the dormant season,
but you've got to protect your dragon fruit. Like I said,
these are one of my favorite plants to grow of all time.
I get hyped about them and I have a huge debt of gratitude to my friend,
Richard, over at graftingdragonfruit. We've done some series together.
I've learned a lot from him. So check his channel out.
And check our videos out on dragon fruit,
at least 10ish so in the dragon fruit playlist. Until next time my friends,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.