Pitahaya

[luc]

Quoting Bangkok in the Monster melon subject that Mike posted :

 I would like to have a good tasting dragonfruit and grow it in my garden, the problem is where to get the plant

Bangkok , years and years ago I send a wild Mexican Pitahaya ( Pitaya for some people ) to Leo from the Pitahaya yahoo group .
After it fruited , in California , he told me that this was the best he ever had and said he named it after me ( not verified ) The color inside is a very dark red going to purple . It must be very good because after planting several I never had the chance to taste one , the birds and workers always beat me .

[bangkok]

Okay Luc then it is a nice one i guess. There must be a reason why there are not many red fleshed variaty's around here. I still have never tasted a red one. I m growing a white fleshed one now but in Holland i can easy buy seeds from other species online so i will do that and bring the seeds to here.


About melons i bought one on the local market yesterday which looks like a japanese rock melon. It is small though and also was cheap. If it is a nice one then i will grow it from seed in my raised bed.

[eNorm]

Hi Luc,

I actually have one of these planted out from Leo.  It's been pretty slow growing for me so far, but I hope it speeds up this year.  I've yet to taste the fruit, but Leo says it's very tasty.

eNorm

[nullzero]

Hi Luc,

I actually have one of these planted out from Leo.  It's been pretty slow growing for me so far, but I hope it speeds up this year.  I've yet to taste the fruit, but Leo says it's very tasty.

eNorm

eNorm,

This DF interest me a lot, would love to trade with you if your interested.

[fyliu]

bangkok, one reason is white pitahaya is normally self-fruiting but reds are not. It takes real work to go through the gauntlet of thorned plants to pollinate each flower when it flowers, at night.
I know there are red ones in SEAsia since at least 5 years ago. My dad came back from China and told me it's a waste of time to grow them since they're so cheap over there. But we never did get any red fruit shipped over from Vietnam/Thailand/China.

[bangkok]

bangkok, one reason is white pitahaya is normally self-fruiting but reds are not. It takes real work to go through the gauntlet of thorned plants to pollinate each flower when it flowers, at night.
I know there are red ones in SEAsia since at least 5 years ago. My dad came back from China and told me it's a waste of time to grow them since they're so cheap over there. But we never did get any red fruit shipped over from Vietnam/Thailand/China.

Oh maybe that is the reason then, it is no fun to hand-pollinate a stingy cactus when mosquito;s are biting you at nite.

But i still think it has to do with the red urine that you might get from eating them a lot. Anyway i still want to grow a nice red one and also yellow, all on one tree would be awesome and is what i go for.

Fruits that are easy to buy are mostly picked too early or sprayed with loads of chemicals that are illegal in western country's. Also i like home-grown foods much more because i can see them grow.  Dragonfruits cost about 2 us$ a kg at the moment on the market.

[fyliu]

good point about the urine. I actually like the effect but unfortunately I never get enough fruit off my plants to do that.

It's that expensive over there? It costs maybe 2usd a pound here, or 4usd a kg.

I'd think it would be cheaper there since it goes through more fruit flushes a year in the tropics than in the subtriopics.

[bangkok]

good point about the urine. I actually like the effect but unfortunately I never get enough fruit off my plants to do that.

It's that expensive over there? It costs maybe 2usd a pound here, or 4usd a kg.

I'd think it would be cheaper there since it goes through more fruit flushes a year in the tropics than in the subtriopics.

Well at the moment big NDM mango costs the same, and green mango's half that price. 2 plates fried rice on the market also cost 2 us$. In Europe you cannot even park your car 1 hour for that but parking is free here so not easy to say if it is expensive. Also this is BKK not some countryside village and the marketsellers all need to have a new pickuptruck to go to the markets.

For 1 kg dragonfruit you can also buy a small grafted mangotree/jackfruit/longan/lychee/lime or 3 small dragonfruit cuttings with roots in a pot or 2 litre gasoline or 3kg banana's. Or 10-15 minutes in a taxi. So you decide if it is expensive.

[FlyingFoxFruits]

http://www.tropicalfruitnursery.com/dragon/pages/Zamorano.htm

i really wanted to fruit this one years ago, as a newbie...and it got ravaged by the cold...much faster than the other varieties I had growing at the time...

has anyone tasted this one? or is anyone growing it?

Zamorano looks so dark red!!

[fyliu]

I bought a Zamorano from Florida via ebay. It's large enough now but no fruit from that one yet.

Í'm a little wary of dark red varieties. Some of them from the Irvine collectoin are really tart. I'm not sure if the fruits were unripe or what else. Does someone know which ones are tart and which ones are sweet?

[Fruitguy]

http://www.tropicalfruitnursery.com/dragon/pages/Zamorano.htm

i really wanted to fruit this one years ago, as a newbie...and it got ravaged by the cold...much faster than the other varieties I had growing at the time...

has anyone tasted this one? or is anyone growing it?

Zamorano looks so dark red!!

I've got a couple of cuttings going that I got last year.  I could break you off a piece if you want to give it another go.

[eNorm]

Hi NullZ,

I just barely planted it in the ground last summer and it's only about 2 or 3 ft tall with no branching.  Hopefully soon it'll start growing and branching.  I'll let you know.


Adam,

I have been growing the Zamorano for a few years and it's pretty productive.  The fruit has a nice balance of sweet and tart.  It's not a huge fruit... maybe less than a pound.  I'm trying to recall, but I don't think it has been self-fertile for me.  The times when I only had flowers from Zamorano, it didn't produce a fruit when hand-pollinated.

eNorm

[luc]

Okay Luc then it is a nice one i guess. There must be a reason why there are not many red fleshed variaty's around here. I still have never tasted a red one. I m growing a white fleshed one now but in Holland i can easy buy seeds from other species online so i will do that and bring the seeds to here.


About melons i bought one on the local market yesterday which looks like a japanese rock melon. It is small though and also was cheap. If it is a nice one then i will grow it from seed in my raised bed.

Starting from seeds takes forever , I did it for fun and forgot about them , once in a while I dump some water on them when I run into the planter...

Are you Dutch ( Nederlander ) ? I am originally from Belgium . No Belgian jokes...OK ?

[bangkok]

Okay Luc no Belgian jokes then  . We don't have so many Belgian jokes as in the past though. We do have Bel-frites snacbars here now lately!

Well then i don't order seeds for the dragonfruit and just wait untill i find me a cutting somewhere.

Today i feel sick because i had to prune my mango-tree and cut the highest branches of to make it a round shape. It is not easy to do that but i hope it is worth it for the future harvests.  It feels terrible to have the highest branches laying on the floor though.

[FlyingFoxFruits]

Thanks for the offer fruitguy!!

I will pass for now, I'm up to my ears in plants.

Enorm,

thanks kindly for the good info! I wanna taste one this year...so I'll be on the look out.

[fyliu]

bangkok, can you import cuttings from the Americas? I don't know the restrictions in your country.

[bangkok]

Thailand has no restrictions for importing plants as far as i know. But to be sure i better ask it to some people around me or maybe somebody on this forum knows the rules exactly.

[Fruitguy]

One should be able to get fruit from seed in about 4 years.

[eNorm]

Thailand has no restrictions for importing plants as far as i know. But to be sure i better ask it to some people around me or maybe somebody on this forum knows the rules exactly.

Hi bangkok,

You could probably get a hold of Sainarong from the Yahoo Pitaya Fruit Group as he is in Thailand and he has his own red fleshed varieties growing as well as many of the American varieties.  I forget which part of Thailand he's in, but he may be a good source for you.

eNorm

[bangkok]

Thanks for the tip Enorm, i will start googling for that.

My wife said that i better not get cuttings from USA without a phyto-report because you never know with the thai customs. Most of the time they are easy but if they want to give you problems (aka get money out of you)  then they sure have something when you receive a  plant with a phyto-report.

I hope to find them somewhere, they must be in Thailand for sure.

[jesseblenn]

Pitahaya from seeds.

Yes, they take about four years from seed.  I brought seeds of the sweetest red I ate in Malaysia in 2007, planted them in 2008 and of the 40 posts full (three plants each) about 4 of them fruited in 2012 (in Costa Rica).  I used teak branches as cheap posts and they are planted in a tire with both sides cut out at ground level.   That works great for drainage and protection from weed cutters.  They would have done better if I had taken better care of them as young plants in bags.   While they are from red seeds, one of them was white fleshed.  I also have some plants of local varieties but so far they bloom without setting fruits.  Quality varies a lot with the wild ones, many produce few fruit and are tasteless.   I want the sweet ones I don't have to baby, and will replant with the best.  I also have the yellow version from Hawaii started and also the small yellow pitahaya which is sweeter and creamier with larger seeds.  Crickets and maybe other bugs eat them up when they are little but once they get bigger no problems.  The few fruits I ave found for sale here cost about $1 each and are not worth eating.  The yellow ones are sold in a few stores at $16 per kilo!  They must be imported from Colombia.  They are said to like higher altitudes.

They only had a short fruiting season in 2012, I hope for better this year.....and more plants fruiting.

[Fruitguy]

My wife said that i better not get cuttings from USA without a phyto-report because you never know with the thai customs. Most of the time they are easy but if they want to give you problems (aka get money out of you)  then they sure have something when you receive a  plant with a phyto-report.

If you want to be totally above board, you might have to get a CITES permit as well.  I'm not well-versed in this area, but from what the link below indicates, the permit would be necessary for most cacti coming into or out of the U.S.

[Fruitguy]

Might have help if I included the link!   

http://www.fws.gov/international/plants/cacti.html

[Kay]

here in Taiwan i am not sure if red/purple fruit are self fertile or if we have natural pollinators, but red here are commercially grown and no hand pollination.  Sometimes i wonder about hawk moths.

Red is usually said to be Hylocereus polyrhizus, not undatus.  they seem to hybridize OK.  but identification of Hylocereus genus seem very hard.

Purple/red are notably smaller than many commercial large ones which can reach over 1/2 kg, but the bigger ones always lack taste.  many commercial fruit like this i think.

unattended true dark purple ones here grown without fertilizer or pruning tend to be little larger than a tennis ball, and white would be like an oval softball.  but purple ones that are selected and pampered get up to maybe 3-400g.

Hylocereus also seem to flower based on photoperiod, so some farms can use lighting to try and control fruiting time more.  it is getting close to a 12 month season here.

I personally also notice huge variation in flavor based on dirt type.  you can almost taste the soil int eh fruit sometimes, so fruit grown near dirty areas often have horrible fruit taste i think.

[Fruitguy]

here in Taiwan i am not sure if red/purple fruit are self fertile or if we have natural pollinators, but red here are commercially grown and no hand pollination.  Sometimes i wonder about hawk moths.

That is a good observation.  Moths, bats, some species of bees and even a butterfly in the Maduca genus are reportedly possible pollinators.  Another possibility is that the self-pollination trait has been cross bred into a red-fleshed type.

Red is usually said to be Hylocereus polyrhizus, not undatus.  they seem to hybridize OK.  but identification of Hylocereus genus seem very hard.

This is a very common misconception - identifying Hylocereus species based on the flesh color rather than the traditional morphological characteristics of the flowers and plant.  Looking at the original descriptions by Britton and Rose, they made no such distinctions. Some of the distinguishing characteristics related to stems used by researchers are number of spines (ranging from 0 to 8 or more per areole), distance between areoles, depth of the undulation between areoles, stem color, and those that apply to the flower are too numerous to list but include flower size, color, whether or not the stigmas are forked, etc.

Hylocereus also seem to flower based on photoperiod, so some farms can use lighting to try and control fruiting time more.  it is getting close to a 12 month season here.

Off-season flowering can be induced through the use of KNO3 or artificial lighting.  The former has been done by placing 75W incandescant bulbs between the rows for 2-3 weeks. The key is to insure that light strikes all surfaces of the plants.  If done successfully, flower buds will appear in less than one week's time after the lights are discontinued. The use of plant growth regulators can also be used to promote early flowering or to delay flowering.

I personally also notice huge variation in flavor based on dirt type.  you can almost taste the soil int eh fruit sometimes, so fruit grown near dirty areas often have horrible fruit taste i think.

Interesting observation.  Sounds like something worthy of further study. :-)