Give your top branches a chance to continue growing up, they will bend over by themselves and will branch out new branches. on your new branches, If you let them grow over 13 inches or more you can twist and bend at the base to train them the way you want them to grow on your trellis. Good luck.
I also get 36” long cuttings from Alik at Shulman Dragon fruit that way once they root I can transplant into my trellis pots and I also bought 2 led fixtures to keep mine growing all winter. My cuttings I bought 25 -3gal clear pots and filled them with cuttings and trying to get them to 36” before moving into bigger pots. I use tubtrugs biggest pot it 20gallon and use the deck concrete post footing which eats up a lot of root room 🤔I may upgrade to 40g pots going forward
Take all lower growth off, esp that huge sucker it’s sapping all the energy at the bottom, & slowing the top unless your growing for cuttings ? Once I see it’s not a bud it comes off, I’m in it for fruit, once mine top the trellis I grow out 3to 4 branches then I let it go wild and branch off the ones falling down, mine get about 12-20” then slow and fatten up and that usually signals top sprout nodes at the horizontal parts of my branch and I let them go up and then pull them over. Glad you over come the slug, they r looking much better 😊
Yup biggest fear in moving my pots outside 😳🤬😵😱😔😨🧨time to go commando on those awful bugs. Maybe try rock salt and packing tape a brim the pot with salt. On the outside I know the soft slugs here on east coast turn inside out with table salt 🧂
Looks like Ants. I spray mist my plants with Spectracide Bug Stop from Home D. Works really well. Just a light mist on the plants prevents bugs and ants from getting on them. You can spray the potting soil as well. Read or research the product for your own to see if you want to use it first.
Hey @TimHoSD, I want this trellis to last >10 years. I didn’t want any wood to be in the water + dirt because over those 10 years the wood will break down. So I tired to find a solution where wood did not touch wet soil.
I wonder if you sprinkle epson salt around top of ur pot like a martini glass. I know the soft body slugs hate salt here on east coast. Also sluggo plus insecticide 😉 I use a product called cal carb from extreme gardening. I wonder if you foliar spray with it, that may deter slug/snail feasting??
Joe, good luck. Hope you get the result you are looking for. I started rooting 2 month back and have has 3 rains on them. The rain pushed my rooting much faster for me. Happy Holidays.
@Dragon Fruit Dude,the material you forgot to mention also done by other people are,burlap covering the post areas for the airial roots to cling to& climb as well -the goal to train the stems to shoot straight up the post as fast as it's able from growth?.
@pauhy5601 - thanks! Actually I mention it - as well as Della - here in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JsOTVCpHCKw.htmlsi=LqGgvSrIny3IXxt- it’s 5 improvement to this design!
Great video! All great varieties. I've gotten a lot of fruit from all but Palora, which is still too young yet. But even the self-fertile varieties can have a hard time setting fruit, as their pollen viability seems to depend on vine age, nutrition, blossoming time, time in the season, and temperature and humidity. Maybe in a more consistently warm climate they'd do better. I've noticed that there is a lot of conflicting information on the web as to which varieties are really self-fertile and self-pollinating or not, and that seems consistent with my observations that different growing conditions affect pollen viability. So, even for the self-fertile varieties I've had better success if I hand pollinate using pollen from a reliable source, like an undatus variety (Vietnam White) or Sugar Dragon if possible.
Thanks for all the info! I too heard that even if a variety is called Self-Fertile, it is better to hand pollinate because the fruits end up being bigger. I hadn't thought about which pollens would be a "reliable source", but once I start getting flowers I'll have to read up on that.
The weeds in your back yard make it look like your soil type is primarily an alluvial clay; are you in the San Francisco Bay area? I am, and i've been successfully growning a lot of varieties.
This is funny on so many levels. 1) People are noticing the weeds in the backyard. 2) You know what type of soil we have based on the weeds. 3) You know what areas of the country have these types of soil. E-mail me at dragonfruitdude1@gmail.com and we can figure out how if we're close or not.
Great topic to bring attention to. When I was a beginner to dragon fruit, I was unfortunately fooled by the same problem. I've since learned that the plants on the left are indeed polyrhizus, while the plants that I ended up buying on the right are guatemalensis hybrids: either American Beauty or Physical Grafitti. PG is better than any polyrhizus plant I think, but it was still an unfortunate experience that should be corrected by the big home improvement stores.
Great info! Based on your input all of my dragon fruits I've bought from Home Depot / been gifted are the hybrids from Guatemala. I bought an official American Beauty, so hopefully the home depot ones turn out closer to Physical Grafitti so I can have more variety.
@DragonFruitDude Hopefully they do! You can call the company that provides the dragon fruit plants and see if they have anymore info about the exact varieties they sell. In the end, I'm glad that I ended up with a Physical Graffiti instead of the Polyrhizus I wanted to buy, as the Physical Graffiti is one the best fruits I've ever had. Good luck.
@DragonFruitDude I can sell you some new varieties of dragon fruit for a huge discount if you're ever interested, so you're not stuck with so many Guatemalensis hybrids. Just let me know and I'll set you up if you ever decide you want more varieties :).
@@cactiman3282 thanks for the offer! Other than the home depot DF, I've just planted Sugar Dragon, Palora, American Beauty, Purple Haze, and Delight. So for now I am maxed out, but I am sure I'll want to try some new ones in a year or two. We could trade too if I've got some you want to try once mine grow.
