“At that stage, some of our farming sections were no longer that profitable. We needed to start looking at new crops that would put us in a better position,” recalls De Wet.
They investigated possibilities such as almonds and blueberries, and then in 2015, De Wet stumbled upon dragon fruit.
“I started researching it, and then received a prophetic confirmation that gave me enough conviction to begin farming this fruit.”
ESTABLISHING THE ORCHARDS
In January 2016, De Wet planted just under 50 dragon fruit cuttings in planting bags underneath a net structure behind his house. When the saplings grew too big, he transplanted them into larger containers.
In 2018, he laid out his mother block of 0,7ha, and then systematically began adding more cuttings, initially procuring dragon fruit cuttings locally, but eventually importing plant material from the Philippines.
At first, he trained a few plants up single posts 3m apart in the row and with an inter-row spacing of 4m. Later, however, he converted to trellis-based T-bars and decreased in-row spacing to 1m. This resulted in a density of about 2 500 plants/ha.
This story is from the May 07, 2021 edition of Farmer's Weekly.
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This story is from the May 07, 2021 edition of Farmer's Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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