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.
