Some people confuse between cactus and dragonfruit. But it easy to differentiate them both. A dragonfruit plant produce 4 to 6 dragonfruit in a season. It like summer and high temperature climate conditions.
An average draonfruit weight is 300 to 500 grams. Sometimes it can be over 600 grams. In global markets, dragonfruit is costlier than any common fruit. It is not easily available everywhere. But it can grow at home gardens/terrace in your house.
Let's understand today how to grow dragonfruit at your terrace garden.
How to grow Dragonfruits at home?
Dragonfruit is full of carbs, vitamin C, fibers, and almost zero in fat. It increase the immunity of human body and provide quality benefits quickly.
Methods of growing dragonfruits at terrace garden
There are two fundamental methods to grow dragonfruit in the terrace garden. These two methods are differentiated at initial steps and the time period of yield.
Growing dragonfruits from seeds
Dragonfruit plants take a longer time to grow from seeds. This period is almost three times more than growing dragonfruit from cuttings.
Seeds take almost 25 days to become a sprout at the initial stages. In its first year, there will not be any dragonfruit on the plant. The second year it will repeat the same. From the third year, you will see that plant is growing rapidly and producing dragonfruit flowers. These flowers later become dragonfruits.
This is the slowest method to grow dragonfruit. Also, it is not certain that you will get a quality yield of dragonfruits.
Growing dragonfruits from cuttings
This is the most trustable method to grow dragonfruits at home or on a business scale.
In this method, you grow the dragonfruit plant from cuttings of a fully matured dragonfruit plant. These cuttings grow faster and give results in a year period.
Requirements to grow dragonfruits
- Containers/pots
In the initial stages, you need a plastic container of 30 inches diameter and 10 inches depth to plant 10 to 12 cuttings easily. It should have proper holes for drainage and fill with some small crushed(half to 1 inch big) from the garden.
For transplantation of a single plant, you need 15 inches diameter container with a depth of 10 to 12 inches.
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If you want to grow dragonfruit plants from seeds, then your container size will be according to your number of seeds. Suppose you are growing 20 seeds, you need 15 inches diameter container with a depth of 6 inches initially.
You can use suggested containers for single plants later during transplantation.
- Preparation of Soil mixture
You can't grow dragonfruit just in direct garden soil. You need to make it more fertile.
To make a fertile soil mixture, you need 40% garden soil, 30% vermicompost, and 30% river sand.
Your quantity of soil mixture depends on the number of plants you are going to grow. For one plant, you need 4 to 7 kg of soil mixture.
- Temperature and humidity
For the initial growth of the dragonfruit plant, you need a moderate temperature near 20 to 24 degrees Celcius. For middle and rapid growth, dragonfruit plants need high temperatures. It should be 32 to 40 degrees Celcius. At the time of harvesting, 30 to 35 degrees Celcius temperature is common.
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For the initial growth, the dragonfruit plant feels better in moderate humidity. For middle growth, humidity must be less (10%) and at the time of flowering, it can start to increase.
- Open terrace surface and direct sunlight
Dragonfruit plants need an open-air surface on the terrace and at direct sunlight of 5 to 8 hours a day. It grows quickly in direct sunlight. Lesser sunlight or temperature can affect the growth and invite some diseases in the plant. To overcome these diseases, you need to treat them by providing less water and quality sunlight.
- Supporting stands
During their quick growing period, dragonfruits start to hang around and sometimes break from the stem. It increases the time of producing dragonfruits because of recovery.
To overcome such problems, you have to make sure that before letting them hang around, provide them a support stand and tie with thread.
Your height of the support should be at least 6 feet and you can use three to four stands in the same pot for the long-term growth of the plant.
Process of Growing dragonfruits at the terrace garden
- Sowing of seeds/cuttings
You can dry dragonfruit thin slices(less than 1mm) on tissue paper or on cotton cloth in direct sunlight. After two or three days, separate these black seeds from the tissue or the cloth and use them in your garden.
Sow the seeds in a big container and carefully do not let them overlap on each other. After 20 days, these seeds start to become sprout. When they become stem, follow the process you follow with cuttings(following).
You can buy dragonfruit cuttings direct from the nurseries. You need to sink them less than half in the water to get sprout in the bottom section of the cuttings. After soaking them for 10 days, you just have to dig in the pots/containers filled with the soil mixture. Cover the cuttings with a soil mixture and spray some water gently. Sow the cuttings in the big pot/container initially. When each of them starts to produce a new stalk, replant them in separate containers each.
- Composting in dragonfruit plants
Composting is required when dragonfruit plants walk through flowering stages. You need to provide each plant vermicompost or whatever kind of organic compost, on each 30 to 35 days.
Remember to check the quality of compost just before the flowering of the dragonfruit plant. So you need to provide compost 8 to 9 times a year.
- Transplantation of dragonfruit plant
You can use a small cultivator tool or any sharp tool to dig with precision and pick each of the plants cutting from the soil mixture.
You have to make sure to not break the roots and stem of the cuttings. The best time to pick them up and the transplant is just two days after the spraying water. The little presence of moisture helps to separate their grab from the soil.
- The flowering of the dragonfruit plant
After 6 to 8 months, dragonfruit plant flowers start to appear. They remain flower bud for a time and then open just for a night. This night is for germination for the flower to produce fruit.
On a single plant, all flowers don't appear at the same time but they appear one after another. When flowers appear, you make sure to cut the upper sections of the new stems to reduce unnecessary growth and help to produce more buds.
The common time when these buds become flowers is between 12:30 AM to 03:00 AM. From the next morning, these flowers close themselves and start the further process to produce dragonfruit.
In the next 15 to 20 days, this flower becomes a proper dragonfruit but there is still time to become a mature fruit. After 15 to 20 more days, it becomes a fully pink matured dragonfruit and is ready to harvest.
- Harvesting of dragonfruit
30 to 40 days later, when the fruit becomes dark pink consistently on the whole surface, harvest the dragonfruit immediately. The best time to harvest it is morning.
You just have to grab the dragonfruit, twist it around its vertices and take it out.
Season of growing Dragonfruit
Dragonfruit grows in summers but sowing starts in March. Dragonfruit grows slowly initially but after 100 days from sowing, it picks up a fast growth. It takes 5 to 7 months to get the buds of a flower in a dragonfruit plant. From August, flowers start appearing and follow the process of producing dragonfruit. Within a month to 1.5 months, dragonfruits become ready to harvest.
Steps for better and easy growth of more dragonfruits
- Provide one container to each of the cuttings during transplantation for healthy and wider growth.
- Don't spray water daily. Make sure to provide each plant with water within 8 to 12 days.
- Use strong and tall support stands during mid-growth of the plant to get stabilized.
- Cut out the section if it is yellowish or produces a bad odor.
- Remove the dry flower portion later. It will save the fruit from worms.
- Direct sunlight is a key factor in dragonfruit farming.
- Don't expect fast and guaranteed results if you are failed to manage and proper care of plants.