Hello dragon fruit enthusiasts! This is Jay, with Hybridizing Dragon Fruit, where we teach you how to make your very own dragon fruit varieties! Today’s tip of the day is about: Fast Growing Seedlings. I would like to share some tips that will have your seedlings growing at potentially MULTIPLE times the rate, so you can get to flowers and fruit in record time! There is quite a lot to go over, so let’s get started!

Let’s start at the beginning! Take your seeds, and soak them for 24 hours. But don’t use plain water. Add a few sprays of hydrogen peroxide to the water. I tend to only use a spray or two as that seems to be enough. You see, hydrogen peroxide is wonderful at rejuvenating old seeds and increasing the germination rate pretty substantially. It gives you the best seed start possible, so don’t skip this step!

After a day has passed. Take your solution of water and seeds and, as evenly as possible, pour it over your pre-prepared soil like this. Gently sprinkle a very light layer of soil on top, just enough to cover them up. At this point, I like to put them in a drip tray so I can bottom water them, which makes them incredibly easy to maintain. Just throw some water in the tray when the seedlings dry out, and you forget about them for a week or two.

Now, nothing makes me more sad than when I see growers posting pictures of their one-year-old seedlings that look similar to this right here. There is a much better way…

See these seedlings here? They are the SAME age as those tiny ones you just saw… And that leads me to a HUGE tip that will help your seedlings grow at literally multiple times the rate! Put them under a full-spectrum LED grow light and keep it about a few inches above the seedlings… Here is the kicker: you are going to leave the light on… 24-7… without ever turning it off. You heard me right! Zero rest period! You are going to trick these seedlings into thinking it’s perpetually spring! This will have your seedlings furiously growing around the clock, as long as you can keep them warm and moist. The amount of growth you get from doing this is absolutely INCREDIBLE!

Now you are truly off to a fantastic start. If you have been following our steps so far, your seedlings should have sprouted incredibly fast and with a HIGH germination rate. Keeping those seedlings under a capable LED will have them multiple times LARGER as well, which makes them a LOT easier to graft. Grafting by taping down the cotyledon’s is best when they are small, but I prefer to tip graft them when they are a little larger…

As we discussed in a previous video, grafting young tissue to young tissue will give you the best chance possible for a quick healing and solid connection. So, make sure you graft to new growth on your mature rootstock whenever possible, because it’s worth the extra effort. And speaking of extra effort, I have another tip that will have your seedlings growing multiple times faster!

And that is thumbing off undergrowth! This is one of the biggest things slowing down the growth of your seedlings. Countless times in groups and posts, I see people telling others to let nature decide and leave the growths. This is some of the WORST advice you could listen to. Nature is wonderful at adapting to all kinds of situations, but it’s human ingenuity that truly realizes a plant’s potential.

Each one of those branches is dividing your seedlings’ energy, and slowing down its growth. Think of your seedling as if it were a garden hose. With each split in the hose, the water pressure drops. The water rushes through exponentially less vigorously the more outlets there are. That’s why you want one single growth tip. This will have your seedling growing the fastest when doing a traditional graft. Now just to be clear, if you are doing a canopy graft, you can allow at least 3 branches to hang down, but any more than that and you will just be stunting the growth rates.

It’s the exact same thing as thumbing the undergrowth off an adult dragon, only you have to be a little more delicate. This will very drastically affect the growth rate of your seedlings. When all of its energy is focused, it will mature much faster, and you will get flowers and fruit faster as a result.

And on to our last and final way to completely optimize the growth of your seedling hybrids…. And that is to fertilize with an organic fertilizer containing lots of nitrogen during the maturing stage of your seedlings’ growth. Your seedling will grow at multiple times the rate if you give it an infusion of nitrogen to send it growing into overdrive. This is exactly what we want for now, until your seedling gets to the point that it is growing actual mature branches with adult spines. It’s at this point you need to change your strategy.

Once the emergence of a mature branch has taken place, it’s time to let that baby hang! This is a huge step in the development of your hybrid, and now we can prepare to force a bloom. Now that you have a mature branch hanging down, you need to stop giving it nitrogen altogether so it stops being in vegetative growth.

This is the time to introduce a bloom boosting fertilizer such as: Flora Nova Bloom, or you can take the organic route and choose something like Dr Earth Flower Girl Bloom Booster. Adding lots of phosphorus and potassium to the soil will shift the plant from its state of vegetative growth, and force it into a blooming state early, if it’s capable…

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/HybridizingDragonFruit.

Grow something AMAZING!