Author Topic: Dragon Fruit thread.  (Read 940194 times)

spaugh

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3075 on: June 07, 2020, 11:12:56 AM »
First Asunta3 flowers tonight and its raining  :(



Damn, that’s a beautiful looking flower!

Simon
How is the fruit on the Asunta? Ive not seen those plants in person yet.

It was the top rated fruit one year at the pitaya festival, brix was like 24 or 25 and it has the purple flesh that actually has flavor. 

I havent tried them yet but its supposed to be super good.  Its a edgar valdivia creation, the guy is the guru.
Brad Spaugh

ricshaw

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3076 on: June 07, 2020, 03:48:04 PM »
How is the fruit on the Asunta? Ive not seen those plants in person yet.

Just remember that NOT ALL Asuntas are the same. There are many Dragon Fruit varieties named Asunta IE: Asunta 1, Asunta 2, etc. and there are more than one numbered Asuntas IE: Asunta 5.

Part of the problem is Edgar gave away a lot of "Asunta" seedlings to hobbyists and the hobbyists assumed that all Asunta 4 hybrid seedlings are now Asunta 5.  :-[

Kellirich

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Is this DF worth trying to save?
« Reply #3077 on: June 09, 2020, 11:57:35 PM »




Hello all! 

A friend recently moved and gave me what was left of her dragon fruit plant.  As u can see in the pics, it’s seen better days. 

It is obvious that it needs a new planter but other than that, it is very yellow, has brown spots on some of the pieces and just looks very sad. 

I’d Love to have a dragon fruit plant but I don’t want to go thru the effort of building the support structure and repotting it if it is just too far over the brink. 

TIA Afro any advice or suggestions you may offer.  ~Kelli

RobPatterson

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Re: Is this DF worth trying to save?
« Reply #3078 on: June 10, 2020, 01:39:38 AM »




Hello all! 

A friend recently moved and gave me what was left of her dragon fruit plant.  As u can see in the pics, it’s seen better days. 

It is obvious that it needs a new planter but other than that, it is very yellow, has brown spots on some of the pieces and just looks very sad. 


I’d Love to have a dragon fruit plant but I don’t want to go thru the effort of building the support structure and repotting it if it is just too far over the brink. 

TIA Afro any advice or suggestions you may offer.  ~Kelli
You might be able to get a couple plants out of that original. In the first picture, just past the (what I call) knuckle of the branch, where it starts to lay across the bench, there are "air roots" coming out of the plant. If you wanted, you can cut the long growth at that knuckle and plant the rest of that piece in a pot if you bury those air roots. The air roots are just regular roots and are usually a sign of the plant being underwatered and looking for more moisture, or clinging supports if the plant was grown up a post or wall. Either way, you can use those areas to start new plant more easily. OR, if you want to just maintain the single plant, get yourself a decent sized pot, 10-15 gallon for long term, and make sure you face those air roots to whatever structure you provide for the plant to grow up and out on. You can also just plant it in the ground if you have a suitable area.
As for the discoloration and spotting, you can either trim those parts back or try and rehabilitate them. The yellowing might just be too much sun, if the branches aren't as ill as they look. Some decent fertilizer and reasonably regular watering might clear that up, as might a touch of fungicide, which is typically what causes the spotting. The base of the plant looks pretty solid still, so even if you decide to cut it back, you should have a decent start.
Having said all that, do you happen to know what variety of dragon fruit it is? Would be a shame to put in the effort just to find out you didn't really care for the result at the end. It appears it might be a white variety, possibly pink.

spaugh

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3079 on: June 10, 2020, 03:30:17 PM »
Rob what do you do when it's super hot and dry and the flowers open during the santa ana?

My flowers are all dried up and no pollen when I go to pollinate them.  We had a huge amount of flowers all get wasted in this weather. 
Brad Spaugh

Kellirich

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3080 on: June 11, 2020, 12:28:27 AM »
Thank you Rob!  Very helpful.

spaugh

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3081 on: June 11, 2020, 02:17:03 AM »
Was able to tue some S8s shut and use their pollen tonight.  Had a lot of Bruni flowers



Also had this AX (asunta cross) flowering



Brad Spaugh

RobPatterson

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3082 on: June 11, 2020, 11:48:52 AM »
I go out in the mornings and work my flowers, on days that Im not working. S8's produce a ton of pollen so theres usually enough to collect. Sometimes if theres a bit of a breeze overnight the pollen will get dislodged and is in the flower, but that's easy enough to just bend the bottom flower petals down and away and dump the pollen into my pollen catch tool. So far I havnt had a problem with the Santa Anas depleting the pollen, possibly because most of my plants are on the side of my house that's most protected from the strong winds, when they come. Once I have pollen, and I usually collect most of what I can from as many flowers as I can each morning, I then clean and sort it, removing bugs and plant parts, and then air dry it in a custom dehydrator I made for pollen. After that, whats left goes in the freezer incase I need it later down the road.
My pollen tools are fairly simple: a makeup brush for applying pollen and knocking on petals, a light gauge metal ice scoop that I trimmed (then filed to not be sharp) to be more pointed, which fits well into the dragon fruit flowers conical shape and the dehydrator, which is just an old CD case and some sheet plastic with ultra fine mesh that allows air to move through it. I have a tiny fan pushing air in a loop and a few silica gel packets inside (REMINDER: Do not eat!!) and that sucks out the extra moisture from the pollen and allows it to keep in the freezer for longer. I rotate my emergency pollen stash depending how much I can get at a time, but I usually keep a week's worth of pollen, in vials, at any one period.
p.s. A one liter plastic soda or water bottle, cut with scissors at an angle from the cap side, makes an excellent pollen catch tool, by the way. And is easier to make.





« Last Edit: June 11, 2020, 02:18:38 PM by RobPatterson »

spaugh

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3083 on: June 11, 2020, 02:20:48 PM »
I think its the bees stealing the pollen, not the weather.  They strip the pollen before the flowers even open.  By 7PM they are getting in as soon as the flower starts to open and pollen is all gone within minutes.  I see them they all have big blobs of pollen on their legs.  The neighbor has hives just a few hundred feet away.

So what I have to do is go out in the afternoon before they start opening and tie a few flowers shut for pollen then go do them at night once the bees are in bed.  Makes it a pain.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2020, 02:38:08 PM by spaugh »
Brad Spaugh

beicadad

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3084 on: June 11, 2020, 03:49:31 PM »
I think its the bees stealing the pollen, not the weather.  They strip the pollen before the flowers even open.  By 7PM they are getting in as soon as the flower starts to open and pollen is all gone within minutes.  I see them they all have big blobs of pollen on their legs.  The neighbor has hives just a few hundred feet away.

So what I have to do is go out in the afternoon before they start opening and tie a few flowers shut for pollen then go do them at night once the bees are in bed.  Makes it a pain.
This is what is happening to my vines. Bees can steal all of the pollens before the evening. I had to cover a few flowers with bags and collect pollens later. Fortunately just a few flowers give me sufficient pollens to pollinate many flowers.

I save my pollens in a small container and then put in a zip lock, then in a refrigerator. It should last a few days without problem. Just continue to save some pollens occasionally throughout the season. Not too cumbersome for me.

brownkawa

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3085 on: June 14, 2020, 03:25:09 AM »
We are new Dragonfruit parents with an ignorant question. 

We planted this dragonfruit from a started plant in April.  It's putting out two new shoots, and the larger one (on the left) has sent out air roots... but it's on the side opposite of the post.  How can we get it to find the post?  The stem seems very upright and firm, and we don't want to break it by tying it to the post.  How flexible are they? If we tie a looser loop around the post & stem, will the stem find its way to the post (like a vine does)?

(The air roots already on the post were on the plant when we got it, and they don't seem to have grown at all -- we spray the post daily.)



Kimi Ishikawa
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Rannman

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3086 on: June 14, 2020, 04:37:54 AM »
You are overthinking this, which we can all do on occasion. The best thing to do is just let the new growth keep growing. Tie something around the plant and the post(I use strips of old cotton sheets or bath towels), and every few days tighten it up a bit. This will slowly pull the plant toward the post without breaking it. It’s always best to tie them in case the wind causes them to break. Hope this helps👍

Mark in Texas

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3087 on: June 14, 2020, 08:35:48 AM »
I think its the bees stealing the pollen, not the weather.  They strip the pollen before the flowers even open.  By 7PM they are getting in as soon as the flower starts to open and pollen is all gone within minutes.

Yep, same thing happens in Texas.  Friend who grows pitaya posted a bunch of honey bees on a flower opened just before dusk.  Sad, I gave him a cutting of Sugar last year, Texas has been getting some hail storms and he lost 15 flowers and some of the plant.  I got a new roof out of  it, yay!  Town south of me, Kerrville, got up to 2.5' of hail!!!!!

That Asunta is gorgeous.

Even though I only have 5 rooted cuttings done last year this year's flowers have been unreal.  I've been pollinating 2-5 flowers almost every night.  Some are as big as basketballs and just stunning.



Not bad for a small greenhouse collection.



brownkawa

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3088 on: June 14, 2020, 04:03:38 PM »
You are overthinking this, which we can all do on occasion. The best thing to do is just let the new growth keep growing. Tie something around the plant and the post(I use strips of old cotton sheets or bath towels), and every few days tighten it up a bit. This will slowly pull the plant toward the post without breaking it. It’s always best to tie them in case the wind causes them to break. Hope this helps👍

Absolutely, utter ignorance breeds overthinking (especially for someone like me)!   :D
Thank you so much for your quick and reassuring reply.  We will do exactly that!
Kimi Ishikawa
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spaugh

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3089 on: July 10, 2020, 04:41:56 PM »
Just wanted to share pics of my yellow undatus plant sold as "giant hawaii gold".

This is easily the fastest growing DF plant I've got out of around 30types.

It's starting to flower for the first time. 



Brad Spaugh

Mark in Texas

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3090 on: July 11, 2020, 07:30:03 AM »
Just wanted to share pics of my yellow undatus plant sold as "giant hawaii gold".

This is easily the fastest growing DF plant I've got out of around 30types.

It's starting to flower for the first time. 




Nice group!

spaugh

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3091 on: July 11, 2020, 04:03:55 PM »
Hopefully its covered in yellow fruits this year, it's got a few buds started.  If people want a fast growing plant this one is crazy fast growing. 
Brad Spaugh

RobPatterson

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3092 on: July 26, 2020, 12:23:34 PM »
Well, i finally got to making my first harvest of the year. Its been a while since the SoCal weather cooperated enough to not murder my budding flowers and young fruits, so this is my largest "first flush" bounty in a while. Here's to hoping that everyone else is as lucky as i am this year.


simon_grow

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3093 on: July 26, 2020, 04:35:22 PM »
Beautiful harvest Rob, you’re probably 3 weeks ahead of me. I love how productive Dragonfruit are. I have an old vine that’s probably 8-9 years old and I stopped watering it last year because I was going to discard it and start a new healthier vine but it ended up flowering a lot last year so I began fertilizing it again and ended up getting a decent harvest from it. Here’s a picture of the vine last year. The vine is inrough shape but it’s still productive.



Simon

nosoup4u

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3094 on: July 29, 2020, 06:18:56 PM »
edit - looks like a real flower bud!  It's a young plant and the bud is right at the base so I am not hopeful for fruit but I'm gonna try to grab some pollen anyways.



Always enjoy seeing the plants and harvests from people with well-established collections...

Does this look like a flower bud, or just the beginnings of a weird looking branch?  If it's the former, does anyone know if Cosmic Charlie is self-fertile, or if I should go try to snag some pollen from a neighbor I found with a flowering df?


« Last Edit: August 05, 2020, 04:48:47 PM by nosoup4u »

brownkawa

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3095 on: August 05, 2020, 01:23:45 PM »
Wow, so fun to see the gorgeous flowers and fruit folks are posting!  One day...

Here are a couple more questions from this dragonfruit first-timer...

  • I notice that one of our two new shoots has taken off, and the other grew just a couple inches and stopped.  Does just one stem climb, and the other was just a back-up or something?
  • I notice the air roots seem to have grown mainly where we tied the stem to the post and not so much between ties... should we add more ties so the whole stem is in contact with the post?
  • I notice the air roots are very short -- just touch the post, and don't seem to be "reaching" to wrap around it.  Is the ridged/grooved nature of our post problematic?  (We brought in a dead Juniper trunk because we thought it looked cool and would not impart any unwanted "nutrients" that we were avoiding from steel or treated wood... hopefully that was an OK choice!) ...or do we just need to be more patient?

Thanks in advance for any insights, and thanks for all of the great info in this forum in general!

Kimi







Kimi Ishikawa
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RobPatterson

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3096 on: August 05, 2020, 09:37:41 PM »




Air roots tend to do what they want, when they want. I have some plants that are thick with them, and have been for years, and some that dont even produce them. And as you can see, ive even got some trying to attach to Trex false wood structure. I think theres a difference between species in how likely they are to make them, which might be a result of the plants being crossbred with other types of cactus. I dont know if other types of succulents create these types of clinging attachments, as they were essential to the original pitahaya in their tropical environment, where they grew up trees and other structures.
Btw, Brownkawa, do you happen to know what type of dragonfruit you are growing? It looks like a red flesh variety.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2020, 09:40:53 PM by RobPatterson »

brownkawa

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3097 on: August 07, 2020, 07:55:04 PM »
Thanks, Rob!  I'll just wait and see...

I am ignorant about dragonfruit types, but I think mine is magenta outside and white inside?  At least those were the pics on the fastgrowingtrees.com site.  They ID it as Hylocereus undatus -- googling it looks like that agrees with the pics on their site?

https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/products/dragon-fruit-cactus 
Kimi Ishikawa
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RobPatterson

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3098 on: August 07, 2020, 11:55:33 PM »
Im not 100% sure, and with all the crossbreeding i dont think anyone is, but I do think its a red variety. Most of the red plants have inverted "scalloping" on the edges of the stems, the area between the thorn points. Meaning they dont roll out from thorn to thorn, they curve in. The amount of the curve varies from species to species, just like the outward curve varies on the pink ones. If you've ever seen a mature and healthy American Beauty plant, you'll know what Im talking about. The yellow Megalanthus variety also has inverted scalloping, but the thorns on that one have a very distinctive single point, and a wooden quality, much like rose thorns.
I dont mean to discredit whoever told you the details about your plant, btw. Im more concerned about whether its the only variety you own, and if its not what you were told it was, that you have the means to pollinate it once it flowers. Reds tend to be self sterile, or fussy when they aren't. Too many people wonder why they never get fruit after tending to these plants for years, only to find out it's because they need a pollinator. As a general rule, I advise people to never grow just one type of dragon fruit. Even if you are limited in space and need to run two plants up a single support, its always better to make sure you keep your options open.

spaugh

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Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« Reply #3099 on: August 14, 2020, 09:44:32 PM »













Brad Spaugh