Hello dragon fruit enthusiasts! This is Jay, with Hybridizing Dragon Fruit, where we teach YOU how to make your very own dragon fruit varieties! Some of our members here at HDF were curious if removing the nodes off of your cutting, really has that much of an effect on the growth rate. So, today’s tip of the day is all about: focusing your cutting.  Let’s get started…

Your dragon responds to every stimulus with a chemical response. From temperature swings and thinning buds to damaged limbs and more, your dragon is sending hormones throughout, to ensure its survival.

For instance: when the weather is warm and favorable, your dragon will start to throw branches from multiple areols at once. Because the conditions are just right, the plant sends chemical signals to multiple node sites that make them form branches. This way the plant can take advantage of as much of the available resources as possible while they are plentiful.

Nature is wonderful at adapting to all kinds of situations to ensure survival… but it’s only through human ingenuity that a plants true potential can be realized. Knowing what we do about the way our dragons respond to stimulus, means we can actually control the behavior of the dragon to suit our needs.

Let us start with branching in general. Days before you see any evidence at all, your plant is focusing its hormones towards the nodes it intends to activate. Then, soon after, is when the swelling of the node begins. This is the tell tail sign that you are about to see a bud or branch forming at this site within a few more days. Finally, you will see a crowning, as the spikes are pushed aside to make room for the forming bud or branch.

Now, both the energy and hormones used to do this across multiple nodes, may not SEEM like much of a burden. But, it’s actually having quite a bit more of an impact than you may think. And this is even more-so the case the larger, and more node filled, the cutting happens to be.

Your cutting has to spread that hormone across multiple different nodes, leading to there being a lower concentration of that hormone present at each individual site overall. That lower concentration also happens to mean, far less vigorous growth. As does having to split the plants energy, trying to generate tissue at multiple sites simultaneously.

Even if you are diligent like myself, when doing your daily rounds and thumbing off undergrowth. You are still missing out on quite an immense amount of vigor, that you can actually FOCUS to your advantage! This is where that human ingenuity comes into play…

By removing the nodes from your cutting, you FORCE the plant to concentrate all of its growth hormones to a single site. Avoiding days of signaling and response at the wrong sites, and ultimately stunting potential growth. This makes an incredible impact on the amount vigor your seedling or scion will grow with. By focusing your cutting, it becomes like a tuned engine channeling constant power at 100% throttle! The larger the cutting you do this with, the greater of an impact this will make as well.

This is a clip I used to demonstrate just how much of an impact this can have by comparing the growth rate of a dragon on its natural roots, versus the very same dragon, being grafted to a focused cutting:

Here is an Ax that I received... last summer. This guy right here. Now from this little piece down here... I'd say right about, here. There is a piece that I cut off. Now that little piece that I cut off, I grafted to a larger piece, and I cut out those nodes. And here is that piece right there. That tiny little guy right there, that I cut off the end of that same ax you saw over there.

Now here's the root stock I put it on. It's a nice big fat Halley's Comet that grows like crazy in my climate! Now watch this. This was grafted AFTER I put the other one into that pot, and just look at the growth on this guy now! Remember, they are the same age! This is what you can do with a properly focused cutting!

As you can clearly see, focusing your cutting by removing all the nodes can and WILL make your seedling or scion grow as fast as possible! So, whenever you plan your next graft. Pick a large, thick, mature cutting that grows fast in your climate, and remove all of the nodes. It’s like strapping a rocket to your dragon and watching it fly off into the distance…

If you would like to learn more about creating your own dragonfruit hybrids, please give us a thumbs up, a subscribe, and be sure to join our Facebook group @Facebook/groups forward slash HybridizingDragonFruit.

Grow something AMAZING!