Another update on the dragon fruit seedlings, and a cutting!

It's been a couple more weeks and though the dragon fruit seedlings haven't grown up, their spines have clearly grown down. As I said before, there are two leaves in a cactus seedling and when the middle of it gets covered in spines, the leaves are shed off and it looks like a true cactus. They're not completely down yet, so the leaves are still there, but I give them another month or so before they look like tiny cacti.

Remember the cactus I got a while ago? I replanted it and made it into a bonsai, it actually looks very nice! I'm not sure if the flowers are naturally green, the store may have just dyed it. I hope they're regularly like that, but I don't know. All I did was replanted it into peat moss and perlite in a nice pot, and surrounded the base with regular rocks.

Another thing, thursday, August 13th, I got a rooted dragon fruit cutting from ebay. It's the red fleshed kind, and was about 16inches long from the soil line when I bought it (smaller than the listing, but these are supposed to grow FAST from cuttings, as much as an inch a day.) The first thing I noticed was the packages weight. I was surprised at how light it was, less than a pound. From reading about the weight of cacti and that this was supposed to have a large diameter, I figured it would weight three or four pounds. The root ball was surrounded by peat moss and plastic. If I had know how fast these things root, (because that's how they climb) I would have just bought a regular cutting for cheaper. This thing might have even rooted in the mail.

The cutting had very short spines on the inside of the curves, which was convenient because you could easily hold it without getting jabbed. The general shape of the cactus was a sort of seraded edge, with the base seperated into three parts, and it was much lighter than I expected. Halfway up there was almost a woody time of stem, which I just found out is compacted root. The plant is usually seperated into segments separated by roots, of which seek out nutrients in cracks and trees. At the top of the bigger mass there was a little thread section which looked like another portion of the cactus starting.

I already had a six inch pot with some soil mixture still in it, so I planted it inside and added some peat moss and perlite for drainage plus a little granual fertilizer. If it grows I plan to add mulched organic matter for it to leech from. I stuck in two support sticks and taped them to the top of the cactus. I then taped them to the bottom of the pot, and the whole setup is outside on my front porch that gets a good portion of sun daily. I water them every three days and put in about a cup of water mixed with some liquid fertilizer I got from Mark of http://www.blackrivernursery.com . (It's all organic matter, so it might do the trick instead of a solid mass of fertilizer.) I'm watering it this much rather than most cacti because it's supposed to withstand a lot of water since it grows so much. Since I planted it, I think the little strand has grown maybe 1/2 to 1 inch. If it really grows an inch a day when it's settled, it'll get way too big for that pot in just a little while.

Just lazy, I guess. Dragon fruit update

While I have had this update for a while, I've just been putting it off. On July 22nd the tray with the red fleshed dragon fruit germinated, about 100 of them. Only about 10 of the white fleshed seeds germinated, though it's okay because I wasn't exactly trying for them.

True cacti germinate and have two leaves which will be the last ones they make. The top of the "cactling" will start to make spines between the leaves and it will slowly grow to the bottom of the seedling at which point the rest of the plant will die. It looks like a very small regular cactus then.

It's been a couple of weeks since they've germinated and they about doubled in height and look like any other seedling. They've just started to make the spines on the top. Pictures of that will be posted once the spines have spread a bit.

Also, I'm doing a small scale experiment with gibberellic acid Miracle Fruit seedlings on Gibberellic.blogspot.com . Updates of that will not be posted over here.

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)

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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.