PLANTING DRAGON FRUIT - and building a cheap DIY trellis

[Music] so I'm just going to pick up my dragon fruit that I'll go in the post this morning there's something special I've Got to Do with It see you later [Music] one thing I've got to do with this [Music] check this out a box of dragon fruit cuttings welcome back to the weedy Garden little thing is important to know about these little dragon fruits because they've been um sitting in this box in the dark for a couple of days so remember when you're a child and you're sleepy at night time and someone came in and turned the light on or you had to go to the kitchen or the bathroom you turn the light on and it's like oh it's all bright in your eyes it's kind of gonna be like that for these little dragon food cuttings it's pretty exciting actually this is going to be a really cool video about dragon fruit and uh and how to look after them but these ones they're huge I've got three in here this is a beautiful little dragon fruit it reminds me of like firecrackers or something like that put it down on the operating table and we'll just open it up so I can show you these they've been in the dark you see for a few days so we want to just we want to just leave them here in the little tunnel so it's a bit shaded we don't want to put them directly out in the in the sunshine it's a little bit too much of a shock wow they're packed in pretty nicely yeah really gentle oh what a wonderful job she's done wow it's so beautifully packed in it's like a Christmas present just gotta be careful there's a little one that's a little bit little arm hanging off here I want to break anything so this is good for the compost actually a nice shredded paper I put that in the worm farm or on the compost pile so I'm going to leave these tapes on here because that's supporting it and you can see there's the ball the root ball here that's packed in these are ones that I've chopped off my dragon fruit already I've just taken some cuttings I'll show you how to do that later let's just pack it I'll just pack the other ones out here we'll put them up here is a Isis gold see I want to plant Three Dragons three different dragon fruits I want to plant around my dragon fruit trellis alrighty and this one is a sugar dragon sugar Dragon okay so just go out and I'll show you how I'm going to make the trellis because they're going to crawl up on there's a few things that are really interesting and important to remember actually [Music] alrighty I've found a log out here in the in the forest [Music] good this dragon fruit I've got there it's a little bit too high because it's going to take the dragon through like two years to to grow up this here before it reaches the umbrella part of it and as it's growing up I've got to keep trimming off these side shoots that are coming off so it keeps this like trunk appearance so this time I'm going to make it a bit shorter so I'm going to bury it another Steep and just have a meter or so sticking up so it's only this High because once we get up here and it starts to shoot off here it's just going to sort of Bulge over like a mushroom you know so I'm going to plant it over here on this bed next to the next to the bees [Music] down here foreign [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] when I burn it on the bottom here it makes a layer of charcoal around the bottom which is going to be underneath the ground and that way the bacteria in the fungi won't go into the wood because they don't like to go through the charcoal you see so that'll preserve the wood underneath the soil for a lot longer so it won't rot [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] Foods [Music] so well-drained soil mixed with a few handfuls of compost every year a lot of people might think they're a cactus so they don't need to eat a lot of food but that's not correct they like food so lots of compost and manure they'd be happy [Music] foreign alrighty so I've got three different types of dragon fruit here I'm going to plant them all together around the same base and we'll put the first one in here this is a sugar dragon sugar Dragon beautiful it's really easy to propagate uh dragon fruit because all you need to do is chop them off and put them in a pot but there's a trick to it a little trick to it and as I want to grow up here see as it's about a meter high it's only going to take a year or so to grow up whereas my other one which is higher it took about two years for that to grow up but once it grows up to the top it's just going to bloom and Blossom and explode from the top here but um as it's grown up I'm going to trim all these side ones out and I can show you I'm going to replant this one and make a little cutting so we just chop it off here and I can probably make two out of this but you want to make sure you put it in so it's heads up straight okay so we want to remember that this is the bottom and that's the top so you want to trim it and stick it in the ground the right way so that's the way it's growing so this end you're putting in the ground so I can actually make two two trimmings out of this one one two and just put them in the soil like this so I'm going to just tie these ones into the to the stump so they're all touching the stump because they I think the little Roots they like to feel where they want to grow because right now they're standing on this which I'll leave but I'll just tighten them a little bit so it just pulls them just pulls them into this so they're just touching so it's good to know there's different types of dragon fruit for different types of climates all right so if you're living in a desert area there's dragon fruits for desert areas if you're living in the subtropics like I am there's dragon fruits for here the ones that are for here like the subtropics they've got big dark green stems whereas the ones that from the desert they're more thin they've got like a white powdery surface on their skin so so if you're going to get dragon fruit in your garden you can either go to someone you know that's got dragon food growing successfully in their garden and go and get a couple of little trimmings like this little one here and put in a pot or you can go to your nursery and ask them because they'll know what dragon fruits to plant in your area so dragon fruit they love to have the sunshine and they love to have water but they don't like to have too much water so well-drained soil is what dragon fruits love see this one over here it's powering it's like exploding in slow motion now the thing is with the pollination part of it okay there is two types of dragon fruit the ones that are self-sterile and the ones that are self-fertile the ones that are self-sterol they have to be pollinated with the little brush and it's like not really for me so I've got the self-pollinating ones here in my garden which means that the pollinators can come in and pollinate the flour on the same dragon fruit and it'll give fruit so just make sure you choose the self-pollinating ones if you don't want to go around and use the little brush and pollinate all your dragon fruit another thing is if it rains at night time when they're open and flowering you pretty much lost that Harvest another important thing when you're putting this on to tie them up to the pole what happens is it produces moisture in there and then it's more susceptible to aphids and rot and stuff so a thin string tied Loosely is good or something like a grafting tape is good because that's that can breathe so with the dragon fruit when they're growing so you'll have a little growth here like this one here this one's going to grow out this this season and the next season is going to flower you can see the difference between the sort of the hard the hard stem and the soft stem the hardest in this kind of flower the dragon fruit flower only opens once and it only opens at nine times so at night time all my bees are sleeping or inside the hive so I want to attract night pollinators like moth sense stuff like that so they recommend to put some fairy lights around the dragon fruit so I'm going to do that and try that because the first flowers that I got from my dragon fruit didn't produce any fruit so they might not have got pollinated so dear friends as you venture into the wonderful world of dragon fruit let's remember that the magic of growing organic not only nourishes our bodies but it also gives us a deep connection with Mother Earth and uplifts our spirits by growing dragon fruit organically we honor the planet and ourselves and that'll give you a healthier happier existence [Music] too go ahead plant some dragon fruit Add A Touch of Magic to your garden and remember it's not about the end result it's about enjoying the journey along the way okay hope you enjoyed the video hope you learned something beautiful healthy happy dragon fruits [Music] have a nice day and I'll catch you on the next video [Music] GoPro stop recording

Channel: The Weedy Garden

Views: 76,540

Keywords: dragonfruit, dragon fruit, organic, permaculture, garden, gardening, food forest, compost, propagating dragonfruit, fruit, vegetable garden, taking dragonfruit cuttings, trellis, building a trellis, subtropical gardening

Id: ME-7l6Ks3wo

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023