Grow a big, sweet dragon fruit from seed or a cutting in a pot

Dragon fruit is a fruit everyone loves to eat. It can be grown in a greenhouse, on a home balcony or terrace, or even as a potted plant. So how do you grow a dragon fruit that actually bears fruit at home?

Grow a potted dragon fruit like this: a few seeds or a single cutting is enough for one pot, and the fruit will be big and sweet

1. Sowing with dragon fruit seeds

When you eat a dragon fruit, save the seeds, but be sure to clean the pulp off the seeds completely, otherwise it will affect germination.

Choose a fairly fine soil for sowing, and mist with water once every two days.

The seeds germinate at around 20 degrees. After planting, growth is slow for the first two years and faster afterward; in a place with suitable temperatures, it can flower and bear fruit in about the third year.

In particular, it can bear fruit from April to November. The fruit ripens a little over a month after flowering.

2. Propagating from cuttings

If you grow dragon fruit from a cutting, it bears fruit faster than from seed. With good soil and a good environment, it can flower and bear fruit by the second year.

Prepare a cutting about 20 cm long and let the cut end dry in the air for one or two days. Then insert it into a flower pot, keeping it moist and shaded. Roots usually start to form within a month.

If you want the dragon fruit to bear fruit sooner, you need to apply fertilizer in good time. Dragon fruit is a bit like a cactus, but it does not grow very fast. Fertilizing is mainly with nitrogen fertilizer, in small amounts but often.

Once it has grown bigger, apply phosphorus and potassium fertilizer. Dragon fruit flowers need hand pollination, and only then will the plant set fruit successfully.

Be sure to provide good ventilation, plenty of sunlight, and fertile potting soil. Put down plenty of base fertilizer; you can use rice husk ash or fully rotted manure, such as cow manure, sheep manure or chicken manure, mixed into the surface layer of the soil, and then add some calcium-magnesium phosphate fertilizer deeper in the soil. If you do not have these, you can use a compound fertilizer.

When grown from seed, it usually bears fruit in three to four years; when grown from a cutting, it can bear fruit in the second year. Eating a dragon fruit you grew yourself at home really gives you a special sense of achievement! Autumn is here, so why not try growing one.