It's no secret that growing dragonfruit is one of my absolute favorite things to
do in the garden. I've dedicated an entire alley to it here at the Homestead.
But there are some key mistakes you can make when growing them,
which is what we're going over in today's video.
Kevin Espiritu from Epic Gardening,
where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. Now again, dragonfruit,
one of the easier plants to grow, at least in my experience,
provided you have the climate for it of course. But again,
it grows for a long time and if you don't set it up for success correctly,
then you're not going to have an Epic harvest of those dragonfruit.
So we're going to go over five different mistakes that you might be making
growing your dragonfruit. And at the very end of the video,
Richard from Grafting Dragonfruit is going to come in with an extra bonus tip.
So make sure you stay tuned for that. And without further ado,
cultivate that Like button and I will personally breed a dragonfruit variety in
your honor. And let's get into the video.
Mistake number one has to do with something very simple. That's pot size.
A lot of the people who send me their dragonfruit problems in Instagram or
YouTube or e-mail, they're sending me a huge dragonfruit,
maybe something this big, that's in a pot that's this big. It's pretty small.
So dragonfruit,
they want a big pot especially when you're setting them up to grow for three,
four, five, six years. I would say a pot that's at least 20 gallons.
This one I believe is 25 gallons.
These are a little bit taller than they are wide.
Just kind of a nice aesthetic look. I chose terracotta. I want it to drain out.
It's a tropical cactus so it does like a little more water than your average
cactus, but still not an absolute ton.
But the real benefit of having a pot this big is you'll never have to repot it
again. And you can build trellising systems like the one that I have here,
we did a whole video on that,
that will set them up to grow upwards and then cascade downwards in a
supported way. And there's enough organic matter,
there's enough space here for the roots to go absolutely crazy. So again,
the biggest pot you can find, you can use a plastic one if you want to.
You just have to watch your watering, which brings us to mistake number two.
Mistake number two, common one for a lot of plants,
a little bit more severe when you're dealing with dragonfruit, is overwatering.
I mean,
you would think people wouldn't run into this problem because you think of it as
a cactus. It is a cactus, but again, it's a tropical cactus,
so it wants more water than the average cactus,
but it wants less water than the average annual vegetable.
The thing that's nice about following mistake number one and getting a nice big
pot is that when you water it,
there's a lot of soil in this pot and it's going to stay wet for quite some
time. So I come through with a water wand,
you saw that in my last video on essential gardening tools.
And I just give it about an inch of water a week.
But this is a plant that you really do want to dig down in and make sure that
it's dry down there.
Because sometimes it might look dry the first couple inches,
but these roots are down there.
When you put a new cutting in you're putting it in a few inches deep and you
want to make sure that it's dry because you will start to see root rot.
And what will happen is you'll start to see these new stem pieces just plop off.
And I've had that happen on some more sensitive cuttings before,
it breaks my heart. Then of course you can root this cutting,
and you have a new one, but it still takes some time.
So PLEASE make sure you do not overwater your dragonfruit.
Mistake number three is the most painful one for any plant owner,
myself included, especially you're dealing with a long growing plant,
like a fruit tree or a dragonfruit. I mean, take a look at this right here.
What do you notice? Well,
what I notice is I have not trained this upwards very well.
This was curving. I had to fit it to this container when I transplanted it in.
And I said, oh, I'll trellis this up later. So if I wanted to,
I could trellis this up and train it up. That's what I'm going to do.
But look what's happened as a result.
The growing tip of this plant has been pointing down for quite some time now.
What I think is happening is that's signaling to the plant I need to put out
some insurance, basically. I need to put out new stem pieces,
a lot of new stem pieces,
that are going to actually make their way upwards towards the sun.
Cause this one's just not doing its job. So what can I do here?
There's a couple of things that I can do. Number one, mandatory.
I need to take off a good amount of these side shoots here.
Every single thorn is a potential budding node for this dragonfruit.
And so, as you can see,
it is really taking that to heart and it's put out a stem piece or a potential
stem piece on every single one of these.
So I need to take off a healthy amount of these.
Now I have a couple options here.
There's two stem pieces that are coming out at the actual top of the plant.
I can opt to try and train this one upwards and see what happens OR I can opt
to take this one off and let this one go upwards. Kind of a dealer's choice.
What I'm going to opt to do is train this one up. You can see,
the dragonfruit is somewhat flexible. It's not that big of a deal to do this.
You're not going to break anything off in most cases,
but let's do that AFTER we take all these little stem pieces off.
So you want to come in with some sterilized pruning shears and you're just going
to clip right at the base. And I know this hurts.
I know it's a sensitive moment for all of us here.
Some of you are probably squirming in your seats,
but it's absolutely mandatory for dragonfruit growth because these are all
energy suckers, right?
These are all things that are taking energy off of the plant.
And we want that energy to go up here so that finally we can let it branch out
once it gets up towards the top. So these are all going to come off.
You need to be very careful when you're cutting here cause if you cut a little
too close you're going to take off the main stem, which you don't want to do.
Now, if you have a larger stem piece,
like let's say I was to take this one off or take this one off,
just go ahead and root it. Again,
you have a dragonfruit cutting there that you can either give to friends,
you could sell it on Facebook Marketplace. I mean,
some of these dragonfruit cuttings will go for a decent amount.
These ones are so small you can just snip them off with your hand. No big deal.
But again, we're going to signal to the dragonfruit, hey,
stop trying to do this side shoot nonsense, focus on that top growth.
And we're going to give that top growth a better position to grow by training it
upwards right now. Okay. Let's train it up.
So you just want to be nice and gentle. Again, they can take some flex,
which is really kind of surprising. They're strong, resilient plant,
but I did let this go too long.
Don't let don't let me saying they can take some flex mean that you can just do
what I just did here.
This is a little bit too long because I can't really get this one underneath my
trellis without risking breaking something off.
So I'm going to be very delicate here. Ideally,
you wouldn't have to do this, but we're doing it anyways.
Oh, there's a little blue jay over there. Hey man. Wow, that's a pretty bird!
I'm going to get some B roll of that sometime for you guys.
You've got to see that. But take a look at this. That worked out pretty well.
I'm going to tie this this way just to provide a little bit of lateral force
so it's not bending on its own weight this whole time.
This is actually pretty nice.
So now we have one stem piece just barely peeking up above here.
And then we have this one here. So I'm going to make sure that this one,
when it grows, I'll train it up into here a little bit more readily.
And so now we actually have a shoot coming out of the top of the trellis.
At this point, I'll let it branch as much as I want to.
These other ones are a little slower.
These transplants came in a little bit later, but that's totally fine.
So remember, prune, don't be afraid to prune. Get that low growth off,
get it coming up on the trellis and you'll be in a much better spot for quicker
production of dragonfruit. Mistake number four,
less a mistake and more a technique to get a little bit more
fruiting and flowering out of your plant if you're struggling with that.
A lot of people will send me a message saying I have so much vegetative growth,
so many stem pieces, I don't get any flower buds. What can I do?
One thing you can do is just cut off the tip of all of these stem pieces that
you want to produce some flowers and some, of course, beautiful dragonfruit.
What that's going to do is it's going to stress the plant out and it's going to
tell the plant, hey,
if you have the potential to produce any flower buds on this stem piece,
go ahead and do it because things aren't looking too good for us here.
So what you'll see generally, is a couple months later, one, two months later,
you'll start to see the beginning of some flower buds forming.
And that's how you know you did a good job. Now,
the first time I ever grew dragonfruit,
instead of tipping it off what I ended up doing is I actually just fertilized
with a higher phosphorus and potassium fertilizer,
like a bloom booster type of thing.
Now that's not going to necessarily force a bloom in the same way that this
will. It will support the growth of a bloom, but it won't force the bloom.
What I would say is about a few months before you want it to start blooming,
you can do this tipping process where you just come in,
cut off about an inch or so of growth, maybe that much. And it really,
really works to force more flower growth.
Mistake number five is not putting enough cuttings in the pots that you're using
to grow your dragonfruit. Remember if you've chosen a large enough pot,
it will support more than one dragonfruit cutting. I personally put in four,
so I've got my four by four post here. I just put in one on each side.
And what that allows you to do is just simply get more production out of the
single pot. It's a decent investment. You've got a bunch of soil.
You've got a big pot. You've built the trellis.
You might as well max out what each pot can do for you.
So I have the same variety. I have six different varieties.
I have four per variety in each pot. So this is my Ecuador polara,
it's the yellow dragonfruit. My favorite, the sweetest one,
certainly the sweetest, maybe not the most complex in flavor.
But that's another story for another time. Four per pot minimum, I would say,
because they don't really compete with each other too much.
Above ground you have plenty of space to trellis them upwards.
They'll branch out really nicely once they get up there. And then below ground,
yes, the roots are going to be somewhat closer together than normal,
but they're not competing as much as maybe a cabbage or a tomato or one of those
heavy-feeding annuals would be. So that's what I would say for that.
Now let's toss it over to Richard for a final dragonfruit mistake.
Hey guys, it's Richard from Grafting Dragonfruit.
And today I'm going to be talking about cactus rust and how to control it,
prevent it and even treat it.
So cactus rust is a very common disease that happens to dragonfruit during the
wintertime.
And how cactus rust gets transferred to each other is during the wintertime it
gets really gloomy.
Humidity is a lot higher so pathogens are traveling with the fog and
once that mist or that dew falls onto it,
that's how cactus rust will start transferring to your dragonfruits.
It's going to happen and you don't have to worry.
I'm going to show you guys how to take care of it.
Just in case if it ever happens to you,
you guys are going to know exactly what to do right away.
So I'm going to show you guys what cactus rust is. Cactus rust are these little,
little orange dots that kind of look like a rust on a cactus.
So this would be something called very severe.
You guys are seeing this starting to blister the dragonfruit and it's going to
spread if I don't take control of this very soon.
And something that is a low, mild grade,
this just kind of started happening. So you guys see it's not blistering yet.
The little orange dots are kind of like half moons.
But if you guys don't control it, it can spread,
start to rot your dragonfruit branches and it will start to eat the flesh away.
So let me show you guys what I use to help prevent all of this from happening.
Spread it, treat it, control it.
So that way you're going to have happy dragonfruit plants.
Everything is going to be growing fine and you guys don't have to have any
worries. So let's talk about the stuff that I use.
So here I have hydrogen peroxide mixed with water.
So the ratio for this is 3% hydrogen peroxide and half
water/half hydrogen peroxide.
This is if you guys are barely starting to notice that the cactus rust are
starting to come.
I will always use this first to see if I can take care of it and have it kind of
just control itself.
Then I would go to something a little stronger that's not organic.
Like copper fungicide. It's really strong, but it always works.
But if you guys are like me and want to try to keep your garden as organic as
possible, I would always use this little mixture of mine first,
the hydrogen peroxide with the half water.
And this is called Organicide.
And I use this IF this doesn't work, as my next step.
This is organic, it has no chemicals in it. So you don't have to worry about,
you know, bombing it with chemicals. And I use three teaspoons per gallon.
So in about this bottle, I put about half a teaspoon and I'll use this to spray.
And last but not least, if everything fails,
you guys tried the hydrogen peroxide - doesn't work, it's still spreading.
You guys tried the Organicide - still going, not helping, not stopping it.
It should callous, you guys can tell once it starts to control stuff,
cause it stops spreading.
And it turns to like a little scab and it'll fall right off.
And if all that doesn't work, it's blistering,
it's so bad and it's starting to take over very fast.
Copper fungicide will do the trick.
So let me show you guys what I would use at different types of level of
intensity on the cactus rust.
So let's go ahead and use my hydrogen peroxide/water mix.
So for something like this you guys, I would just spray these ones.
So they look like they just appeared.
It doesn't look like they are damaged too much.
So I'm going to go ahead and just give it a good spray.
Just.
Like that.
And I am doing this video in the daytime for recording purposes,
but you guys want to do this when it's sun down.
Make sure that there is no sun hitting this because these can actually burn your
branches. So I'm just going to show you a few examples. And after this,
I'm going to wipe it off.
Wait for the sun to go down or you guys can do it very early in the morning,
but try to not put any of this on your branch until the sun is down and there's
not direct sunlight hitting your branches because it will burn your branches.
But that is an example of when I would use the water/hydrogen peroxide.
So when would I use the Organicide?
So Organicide is something that might look like this.
They're starting to have full rust on there.
It's not blistering yet, but you can tell that it's starting to appear. So.
I'll hit some of the Organicide.
On that.
And when would I use the big boy, the copper fungicide? It's not organic,
so just giving you guys a warning.
But it's kind of worth it so you can save your plants.
You guys have been growing them all winter long.
You guys want to get some fruits on the summer portion and you want your plants
to be as healthy as possible. So here comes in the copper fungicide.
So look at this you guys, it's starting to blister.
There's black spots coming out. It looks like once that pops,
the pathogens are going to spread to others.
So you're going to want to control that right away.
So this is when I would use copper fungicide. So you guys see,
it shows you what it does and just like that,
you've hit it there.
And you're just going to be monitoring this every week.
You're going to spray once, wait seven, so even 10 days, to see any results.
If you guys don't see anything in the seven to 10 days,
go ahead and reapply again. Go to the next level of fungicide,
if you guys need to. And if you guys want to skip all that,
copper fungicide will stop it right away.
I've always had really good success with it. And I'm sharing that with you guys.
And so that's how you're going to gauge what to use.
And if you guys would like organic, there's options.
And if you guys don't mind a little bit of chemical to save your plant,
there's also that option of copper fungicide as well.
So that's how you guys control and maintain and treat
if needed once this cactus rust starts to appear.
So I hope this tip helps you guys. And if you guys have any questions,
go ahead and leave it down below and we'll help you guys figure it all out.
Have a wonderful day. Bye guys.
Huge thank you to Richard for helping out with that final tip there.
We did a full video at Richard's house.
One of the most amazing dragonfruit growers and one of the most helpful people
that I've met in the gardening world. Super awesome guy!
So I highly recommend you check his channel out.
And if you want to know how to grow dragonfruit from scratch,
I have a massive series here on the channel that you can also check out.
So good luck, have fun with this plant.
It's one of my absolute favorites to grow. I've had a lot of fun times,
a lot of success with it, and I hope you do too. So until next time,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.