Dragon fruit sells for 20 yuan each at the supermarket; grow one at home and you'll be eating from it for 10 years
Dragon fruit is, I believe, a fruit many people love to eat; it is rich in vitamins, but in the north, a red-fleshed dragon fruit is really not cheap, roughly 20 yuan each, and buying them at the supermarket is just too expensive. Better to grow one at home and have fruit to eat for 10 years, fresh and money-saving!
You can use the seed-sowing method or the cutting method. If you sow seeds, it takes far too long to grow from seedling to mature plant, so let me share the cutting method, which grows fast!
Night-blooming cereus (Hylocereus undatus) often climbs on tree trunks, abandoned walls or rocks. It has a strong ability to adapt to its environment and is extremely vigorous, and the fruit it produces is the dragon fruit, so we take branches of the night-blooming cereus and propagate them by cuttings!
Choose a thick night-blooming cereus stem, cut it into 15 cm sections, leave them in a cool shady spot for two days, then insert them into the soil. After about 30 days they will have rooted; once the roots reach 5 to 8 cm, transplant them into pots.
The potting soil needs to be a loose, well-draining sandy soil. So you can mix garden soil plus leaf mold plus coarse sand, which gives good aeration and drainage!
In the current season, it is very suitable for taking night-blooming cereus cuttings. When watering, it is better to keep it dry than wet; it is fairly drought-tolerant, so you can water once every 7 days, but in summer, water more often, because the air is hot and dry and moisture evaporates too quickly.
It can be fertilized twice a year. During the growing season, apply a nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium compound fertilizer once, and after autumn begins, apply a liquid fertilizer once.
After about a year, it can grow to one meter to one and a half meters; at this point you should pinch off the growing tips to encourage more side branches, so it will bloom more and bear more fruit!
It likes plenty of light. If the light is insufficient, it will grow slowly and will not bloom or bear fruit.
With this method, dragon fruit propagated from cuttings can bloom and bear fruit after about a year, so you need to wait patiently. The fruit it produces is clean and hygienic, and you can eat it with peace of mind. It has a very long lifespan, so one plant can bear fruit for many years!
That's all for today's sharing
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