Dragon fruit
If you follow my Instagram or Facebook you might have seen that I harvested and ate my very first dragon fruit this week. It was DELICIOUS. Dragon fruit have a reputation for being a bit bland, and the ones I’ve had from the shops have more or less lived up to that. I’m not sure if mine was so delicious because it was harvested at peak perfection or because the time taken to grow this thing meant my anticipation was at an all time high!
Scooping out my dragon fruit
I have two dragon fruit plants, one apparently has white flesh (have not validated that yet) and one which has red flesh (the one I just ate).
Dragon fruit like to climb, but will fruit on branches that are hanging down (like a celebration of reaching the top!). I had high hopes when I got my two 1 ft cuttings and hung a horizontal ladder about 2 metres above them (with some wire to climb up). They took a fair bit longer than I expected to grow – I’m not sure if they didn’t have enough sun, or had too much competition from the Murrayas over the back. But they eventually reached the top, and started hanging down. Then I finally noticed a flower bud.
The ladder for the dragon fruit to drape over. The plant on the right is the one that fruited (it’s doing much better!)
And then I needed to prune said Murrayas (which I got my dad to to because I had busted my knee). I gave him VERY STRICT INSTRUCTIONS not to knock my flower bud off, which he followed. Next day, me picking up the pruned leaves did what? Knocked off the bud!
The second bud - it had already started swelling when I noticed it.
Luckily another one came along and I watched it swell until one night. Boom! Bloom! Dragon fruit are night flowering cacti and each flower only lasts one night. Let me tell you, they are well worth the obsessive checking routine so you don’t miss it. The flower is amazing!
The flower is about 20cm across.
I brushed the stamen gently to make sure the flower pollinated properly.
Two and a half months after the flower, I had a juicy red dragon fruit. I picked it just after I noticed it had split, but I’ve been told this is when they’re at their best. Another tip I got was to add a squeeze of lime – I thought it was tasty on its own, but with the lime juice it’s even better!
Perfect on top…
Split underneath! (please ignore my dry hands - I’d just been paving!)
Next aim is to get more than one fruit for I think nearly two years worth of growing….