Junior Journals Gardening Special!

A personal message to our readers

By The Junior Journals

You gave us feedback and we listened! This special edition is for those fellow
nature-lovers and gardeners. In this edition, you will find tips and tricks on
how to grow your own dragon fruit and mint, smoothie recipes (yummy) and
much more. The Junior Journals hope you will enjoy reading!

Contents (Gardening issue)

A personal message to our readers (The Junior Journals) .................. 1
Contents (Gardening issue)............................................................ 1.5
How to propagate your own dragon fruit (Hannah Cassar Miceli)...... 2
The Beauty of Nature within photos (Alishia Stone) .......................... 7
Dragon fruit and banana smoothie recipe (Hannah Cassar Miceli)..... 8

Fun facts you should know! (Alishia Stone) ..................................... 11

Logos by Catherine Grixti &
Alishia Stone

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How to propagate your own dragon fruit

By Hannah Cassar Miceli

The dragon fruit, also known as the pitaya,
is a sugary, sweet, yet slightly sour fruit with
a high-water content typically harvested
and grown in Southern America and Asia,
namely Mexico, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Thanks to our climate here in the Maltese
Islands, one can easily cultivate these fruits
here.

IN ORDER TO CARRY OUT THIS ACTIVITY, YOU REQUIRE:
• One dragon fruit of large or medium size,
• A plastic bag,
• One small spraying bottle,
• Some kitchen towels,
• A chopping board and knife as pictured
• One small sieve and teaspoon

STEP 1: Firmly hold the fruit from one side, with your kitchen knife in the other
hand. Carefully cut it through the middle. It may seem difficult to get out
hands on one of these fruits since they’re known to be exotic, and therefore,
hard to find, however, to get one's hands on one, most large supermarket
chains such as Welbees Supermarket or PAMA/PAVI typically have these in
stock within their produce aisles.

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You will only require one side
of the fruit for now. Wrap the
other in cling film and place it
in a fridge or freezer. You can
save this half for later to make
smoothies using other
ingredients, or simply cut it up
and eat it while it’s at a cool
temperature.

STEP 2: Now, hold one half of the dragon fruit, and cut out a slice. Once you
place this slice down on the chopping board, it should look like a cross-section.
This slice doesn’t need to be too large, as the fruit itself is packed with small
seeds. This should not be a problem or affect the growing process.

STEP 3: Place the remaining large piece of the fruit in some clingfilm, and
return it to the fridge, just as you did with the other half. Carefully pull the
pink peel off the fruit’s flesh. This should be relatively easy, as the fruit should
be ripe and ready to eat. Dispose of the peel in an organic trash bag or bin.

STEP 4: Now that all remains is a small circle of the fruit’s white flesh, place it
inside a sieve, over a sink. You can either use your own fingers or a teaspoon
for this step as well. Turn the faucet on, and sift through the seeds and flesh,
as if you were sifting flour. If your
sample looks like the picture,
continue running water through it
until most of the fruit’s flesh is no
longer there. It should look
transparent and have a gel-like
texture, with the small black seeds
present. Leave the seeds on the
sieve for later.

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STEP 5: Now that you have the seeds,
take two pieces of kitchen roll. These
should be stuck together, and not torn
apart, to make things easier. Once the
kitchen roll is laid out on your surface,
tuck one sheet underneath the other.

With the sieve in one hand, and a
teaspoon (you can just use your
fingers for this) in the other, scoop the
seeds out of the sieve, and spread them out onto your kitchen towel. Try to
space them out and not lay them in patches. It should look something like the
picture above.

STEP 6: Fold the kitchen towel sheets over each
other, and carefully insert the seeds into a plastic
bag. You can keep these seeds here for about a
week, until placing them in soil. Remember to
lightly mist them every other day through the
tissue, in order to keep the seeds moist. You can
do this with a small misting bottle, or water
sprayer from a distance.

STEP 7: Eventually, you can transfer these seeds into soil. Again, try to evenly
distribute the seeds in the soil. Make sure that they aren’t clumped together
and have appropriate space between themselves. Eventually, you should start
seeing sprouts emerge from the soil, like so;

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By now, the seedlings have developed small root
structures. Make sure to water them consistently every
other day, or every two days. Make sure not to
overwater them, as this can cause root rot, which may
ultimately kill your plant.
Another popular way of growing any plant, including
dragon fruit, is through propagation via cuttings. This
involves a clean sample from someone else’s plant
being placed into water, and then right into soil, with
ultimately the same outcome.
One may easily get a hold of a dragon fruit cactus
cutting by finding them outside, contacting someone
who owns a large plant, or by attending plant trading
events.

Eventually, under the right conditions, you may have yourself a dragon-fruit
tree, although these plants are actually cacti. They tend to stick to walls, like
ivy does, and are quite hardy, and easy to care for. These cacti produce
beautiful, large pink and white flowers with yellow cores; allowing for
pollination.
These flowers typically flower between mid-summer through early autumn,
and are quite fragile. They are sure to attract many bees and critters to your
garden, or roof.

If these flowers are eventually pollinated through fauna such as wasps or
bees, or even through hand pollination which requires pollen bought from
other people, and then applicated to the insides using a soft brush.

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It’s high in vitamins A, C, and magnesium, while at the same time, being rich
in antioxidants. This fruit is plentiful in fibre, which may help those with
intestinal problems, as well as helping you feel fuller for longer.

Considering that there are different varieties of dragon fruit, such as yellow-
peeled ones with white flesh, and pink-peeled fruits with red flesh, if you were
to eat a large amount of red-fleshed dragon fruit, it takes on the same effect
as beets during excretion. It may look alarming, but is totally harmless.

Once it’s time to harvest the fruit, it should look like what you started off with;
plump and vibrantly coloured. To take it off the plant, twist it a few times.
Mind you, it might take you years to finally have a cactus which is able to bear
fruit, although it doesn’t take as long for it to flower.

If the fruit won’t detach from its branch after twisting it, this is a signal that it
isn’t ripe enough for harvest. Let it sit for a few days until you try again.

These are the fundamentals for harvesting seeds, propagating a cactus plant
through either cuttings or a plastic bag and towel method. This takes a lot of
time and patience, but the fruit is definitely worth it!

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7

Summery Dragon fruit and banana smoothie

By Hannah Cassar Miceli

Equipment requirements:
• Chopping board
• A medium to small sized fruit-knife
• A food blender
• Drinking glasses.

Ingredients:
• One tub of yogurt any flavour
• One banana of any size
• Some lemon
• Any type of milk.
• A tablespoon of honey.
• A few mint leaves, preferably in the form
of a cutting.

Steps on how to make the smoothie:
STEP 1: Take a cool piece of dragon fruit and set it on the chopping board. Cut
it into cubes and set it on a plate. Then, chop up a banana and place it on the
plate too, along with the mint.

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To easily cut the dragon fruit into cubes, try cutting off the solid end, and then
making light cuts into the fruit’s peel all around. The peel should be easy to
remove, revealing the soft, white flesh underneath.

Mint plants can commonly be found inside some large chain supermarkets,
such as PAMA and Lidl, and most if not all gardening establishments. It is
highly discouraged to buy such herbs from large chain supermarkets, as these
plants are typically weak or sick, due to the cold temperatures, containers,
and badly lit conditions they are kept in before being sold, apart from the fact
that these plants are typically always of poor quality.

It’s always better to pay slightly more for a good plant
which will live on for years and offer good harvest
while also supporting local stores, instead of
multimillion euro mega chains.

Perhaps a little more difficult, but you could try to
find a mint shrub or patch outside. This typically
works with succulents, rather than mint. Another
solution is to ask someone with a mint plant to give
you a cutting, which you can place in water, and then
in soil.

A freshly picked mint cutting. This can be placed in water to sprout roots, or
used in cooking or making a variety of drinks.

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STEP 2: Before picking the leaves
off your mint cutting, run the
whole thing under the faucet for a
moment, and then pick the leaves
off. This way, you’ll make sure
there’s no insects, soil, or dirt on
your leaves. Set them on the plate
along with your chopped banana
and dragon fruit.

STEP 3: Now, place the chopped fruit and mint into your blender. Pour in your
desired amount of milk, as well as the yogurt tub into the blender along with
them. Use a tablespoon of honey, and one squeeze of lemon. Once done,
place the lemon back into the fridge, as it can still be pressed over further
recipes and flavouring, such as in soups and fish.

Food waste should be avoided wherever possible while working in the
kitchen, whilst keeping a safe and hygienic environment at the same time. If
possible, avoid the use of plastic, or saran wrap as well, cling film. Re-usable
containers and plates placed over each other.

STEP 4: Blend the mixture until smooth and pour into a glass. If there’s any
excess smoothie left inside the blender’s glass jug, take another glass to pour
the excess in. Place it in the fridge. Be careful, however, as this will need to be
consumed within a day due to oxidisation. Drinking it after a day may lead to
gastric discomfort. Relax and enjoy your drink!

10

Fun facts about plants that you should know

Alishia Stone

Have you ever wondered what you could do with vegetable scraps such as carrot tops? Firstly,
don’t throw them in the bin! You can do a fun little experiment and place the carrot tops in
soil and watch leaves sprout. Unfortunately, the carrot top will not produce the typical orange
carrot that everyone loves to eat, but the juicy carrot leaves can be used in your healthy salad
with other delicious vegetables and toppings. If left to continue growing, the carrot will
eventually produce seeds that can be germinated and grown into the delicious orange carrots.
Some other vegetable scraps that can be easily regrown are green onions, lemongrass, fennel,
coriander, basil, mint, spring onions, celery, cabbage, romaine lettuce, potatoes, sweet
potatoes and Bok choy.

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