Dragon fruit, back from vacation.

Sorry for my lack of posts, I was away until the other day, and while I was traveling I came upon something interesting! At a chinese market I finally found the elusive dragon fruit. I was just passing by and I noticed a fruit exactly like the pictures, and next to it I saw one about twice as big but without the scales. I purchased one of each, not being cheap ($6 a pound for the smaller ones and $3 a pound for the larger ones.) The larger ones, I was told, were white fleshed, and the smaller ones were red fleshed.

When I got back to the hotel room, After both were in the refrigerator for an hour or so (I was told to eat it chilled) I decided to cut open the white one, the larger one. It sliced easily in half, and had a strange wood smell (best description possible.) I have no idea if it was just spoiled, but I must say I was extremely disappointed. It was slimy, bland, and like my previous description, it had a woody taste. I also strongly not recommend putting sugar on the white one. It just made it taste gritty.

Nevertheless, I saved the remains and put it in a plastic bag, along with a few spoonfuls of flesh in another bag, to be used for planting. I wanted to try it anyway. There was a huge amount of seeds, probably a few hundred in the sample I took.

For about two days, I refrained from eating the red dragon fruit, because I thought it would taste just as horrible. I knew I had to try it soon though, because they spoil very quickly. It looked nicer, but it still had the strange wood smell. I cut it open and hoped for the best.

It decided to be the best! I took a cautious nibble and let me tell you, it was much better than the white dragon fruit. it had a better texture, less seeds, and a strange combination of strawberry and pear taste. It tasted very good, looked better inside and out, and it was almost eaten before I could take seed samples.

This was the one I was going to put more effort on, definitely. I will try to grow both, but this was the one I would tend to a little more often, strain the seeds the right way, and CARE ABOUT.

To seperate the seeds I took the pieces of flesh from each fruit and soaked them in warm water in a bowl for about half an hour. After the flesh is soaked as much as possible. I poured the mixture seperately into a fine strainer and continually ran water over it until it was mostly just seed. when I had both of them fully done, (about 200 seeds for each) I just sprinkled the mass over a two shallow plastic containers filled with regular miracle-grow soil topped off with perlite. I'll transplant them later into a better mixture, but when I did this I was rushed. I got it watered, and it's been by a window for the past few days.

I also got my carnivorous seeds, but that's for tomorrow.

I strongly suggest you get the red dragon fruit if you're at a store but it's too hard to choose.

Pictures enclosed are the fruit, the fruit soaking, and the tray (before I topped off with perlite)

re

th

Good, Good, Meh.

First good. I have another seedling poking up, and it's the only one with true leaves. They're not green yet, but I at least can tell that it's a leaf unlike the green spikes coming out of the other plants.


Second good, is that a couple of carnivorous plants came today. I tried mycarnivore.com again, and when they were about to ship it I realized that it was likely they would come while I was away. I told them to postpone shipment for a few days, but they shipped anyway, but it worked out in the end because it arrived in less than a day, enough time to unpack it and get it ready.

I got a venus fly trap and a drosera capensis, a cape sundew. I was originally going to just get the sundew, because I have a project in mind for getting several different species, and seeding them all over a terrarium to get a forest of the glistening insect eaters. I decided to get a fly trap anyway, even though I have heard they can be tough growers, and I don't like the dormancy issue. Both were well packed, and mostly healthy though most of the traps were closed and the sundew had no dew, but that's something affected by the sun, which they don't have in a box.

I still have no idea where to permanently keep them, as the light requirements are high. I'm currently keeping them outside in the day for full sun with a cut soda bottle over them for humidity, and at night I put them on a windowsill. I hope they do okay, and while I'm gone they get enough light inside.

The bad is that my large miracle fruit plant has lost some more leaves. They just turn a crinkly brown and shrivel up, some falling off. It's still not more than 20% of the leaves, so I sincerely hope that it is just transplant issues.

A little bad, a little good, a small change to setup

My larger plant has some leaves turning yellow and turning off, maybe ten percent or so. The seller said that about 20% of the leaves falling off from transplant shock is normal, so I hope it's that. I noticed a lot less condensation in the inside of the bag, so I went against the sellers advice and opened the bag, added some more water and misted the plant. I hope this doesn't void my warranty!

On a better note, two of the seedlings have two structures now that I'm pretty sure will open into leaves. They've also grown a bit more, and they're apparently two or three times as tall as they should be (currently three inches each.) This gibberellic acid must be strong stuff. It's too bad that all of the others have either died back or shown no growth. I guess it's not too bad, I have two healthy seedlings, which is infinitely more than I expected.

I'm also changing the grow light setup. I'm replacing the compact with two 24 inch flourescent grow lights, and going to add mirrors around it later. I hope that with this, and the 2-3 hours of sun the ledge gets, I'll have enough light for everything.

Lots of photos, scattered. also for miracletaste.com people.

I have lots of photos in this one, for the miracle taste people. The pictures shown will be the current ones, except for the one where the seedling is just poking out of the soil. I simply like that one. :)

I waited a while, because I had no idea how anything would turn out.

My plant arrived Thursday June 25th, In a surprisingly light package even though the plant was shipping bare root. After wildly ripping open the packaging, I saw a very healthy about 20 inch plant, with it's roots wrapped in moist paper towel. I was actually surprised at the condition of the plant, because there was not one dead leaf throughout the entire thing even though it had been the mail for ten days. The entire plant was tightly wrapped in a plastic bag, and when I opened it I saw a few flower buds! I have pictures below, but afterwords, I had a bit of a process. I had to get the entire plant completely submerged in water for about an hour to get everything hydrated, and let me tell you that is much harder than it sounds. After several tries in getting containers, I finally found one that was just big enough to fit the plant.

I went outside and decided I didn't have nearly enough distilled water to do the entire thing (duh) so I settled for filling it up with a garden hose, and I had to be very gentle with the plant. Once I got the entire plant covered, I added maybe a fourth cup of root starter to the mix, as was recommended by the seller. I let it swirl around for about an hour, when it just started to rain (I was outside, remember.) but I still had a crucial step to do. After intense searching, way more work than I needed to do, I found a maybe too big pot, but I supposed it would work. I mixed up another batch of peat moss and perlite, using a bit more peat this time, added a scoop of miracle gro dirt, some coffee grinds for acidity, and a small of diluted ascorbib acid. I then cut the ends off of two coat hangers, and stuck it in the soil in two sides, took the plant after soaking, dug a hole just a bit bigger than the root ball, and unceremonously stuffed it in. I took the original plastic bag, and following the sellers advice, made sure the soil and plant were wet before tieing the plastic bag over the whole thing. It was a bit of a squeeze, but most of the foliage was free to move. I had to edit my grow setup, so I moved pluto to a different window and raised the seed tray up so it could get an equal amount of sunlight as the larger plant. In the few days it's been set up, one leaf has turned yellow and fallen off, but it looks as if it will be okay. The plastic bag has condensation every day, so I'm prety sure I held it tightly.

And to the seedlings, two of them look dead, but three are pretty tall and are finally making leaves (at least I'm pretty sure.) None of the two leaf like structures actually formed in any of them, and I'm thinking that it's a side effect of the gibberrellic acid, since they're pretty tall for a week old (biggest one is 2 1/2 inches).

All pictures are in newest post, as miracletaste.com people should help.

Pictures of setup, and seeds

For the people at miracletaste, I also have pictures of seeds from before.

New cactus, new setup, new things

Well, now that a few of the seeds have germinated I knew I had to make sure the growing conditions were optimal. The window that I had didn't get nearly enough light, only about an hour a day, plus we have had a lot of cloudy days so nothing was constant. I bought a compact fluorescent light made to simulate daylight, so I assume it has all ends of the spectrum. If that's not true, and it's missing red light, a little bit of true sunlight can go a long way, so the setup next to the window should keep that clear. I got a chain and attached it to the ceiling, and hung the light about a foot or so from the seed tray.

I'm only using distilled water now, since it's only 70 cents or so a gallon anyhow and I need it for my flytrap. I have a little plastic container I use to cover the seedlings which have germinated, which by the way still just look like sticks. No leaves yet. I open it up and spritz with distilled water maybe 5-6 times a day. I've changed the bottom of the aluminum container to moist paper towel to add to the humidity. the main things I'm worried about are the seedlings themselves, one looks dead, it fell over, another looks dry, and the other three haven't opened leaf yet, and I'm worried about the soil acidity, It's PH is 7 while it should be 5 or so. I need to counteract this.

Also, I went to home depot and saw a bigger cactus that was flowering green, and I got it. I replanted it into a larger pot with a pixture of peat moss, small amounts of garden soil, and perlite. I also put it under the grow light, and I'm afraid I'll need to get a second bulb! I'm running out of room if I want to keep them healthy. I took a good picture of the cactus flower though. Pictures here are of the cactus, next post is of MF and setup.