2022: Getting Started
Intro
Our little garden got started back in 2022. It was started for one singular reason. Dragon Fruit.
My fiancee and I had just discovered yellow dragon fruits. They showed up in HEB one day and we decided to give them a try. We both fell in love with them, but they cost something like $8.99 a pound. When each fruit is a pound or two, that adds up quickly. So we thought, rather arrogantly, how hard could it be to grow some? We can have a few to eat, and any extras we could sell at a farmers market.
The plan was to start off with a cutting or two, however two cuttings quickly became four, and then we started to read up on different breeds. As we read up on different breeds, we questioned what we had. We ended up reordering a few cuttings, and before we knew it we had something like 19 baby dragons.
Image of baby dragon fruit cuttings outside.
Summer
The first summer was pretty straight forward as far as keeping things alive go. We live in Austin Texas where it pretty much stays warm and sunny all the time. So climate for the dragons was spot on. The first year, we really only faced 2 issues.
Direct Sun & Sunburn
Cactus Rust & Rot
Direct Sun
Direct sun can cause sunburn in dragon fruits, the give away here is your plant will start to change color. First your plant will develop a white waxy coating. Think of this as your plants own built in sun screen. After that the white will become more and more visible. Good news is, sunburn is easy mitigated, either bring your plan in a bit out of the sun, or just order some burlap and drape that over the top of the plant.
Image of a dragon fruit cutting with light sun burn.
Cactus Rust
As a bit of a golden rule of thumb, white discoloration on a dragon fruit is generally sun burn and easy to solve, and other discoloring is generally bad news. Its typically some form of rot. The most common being cactus rust. Cactus rust if caught early can typically be sprayed with fungizide, typically you are going to want something with copper in it, for example Captain Jack’s is our general go to. However if the rot covers a large portion of the plant, it may be best just cut it away. Assuming the rot does not touch the center of the branch, you can cut off parts of the “fins” and the plant will be fine. If the rot has touched the center of the branch, the whole branch will need to be cut. If you end up with rot at the base of your plant, you cut the top off the plant off, dry it out, dip it in rooting hormone, and plant it as a cutting.
Image of dragon fruit with rot.
Winter
Wintering can be a bit of a trick with Dragon Fruits, or really and fruit tree in Texas. The winters here can get quite cold, we really don’t get snow either, just ice. For our first year, our dragon fruits were small enough to where we just brought them inside.
Image of dragon fruit cuttings camping out inside for the winter.
Bringing the dragon fruits in over the winter kept them warm, however it did bring about a few challenges. First, watering anything large, inside is a pain, thankfully these were sitting on tile, so spilled water was easy to clean up, but depending on your floor, this could be tricky. The second, was the lack of sun. In a perfect world, a dragon fruit with either be growing with ample sun, or it will be dormant. Typically in the winter they will go dormant, and you won’t see a lot of growth. However, ours were kept warm, so they did not go dormant. As such the lack of sun led to rapid etiolated growth. Etiolated growth is thin growth sent out by the plant in hopes to find the sun. The branch will be thin and somewhat weak, and won’t provide much utility to the plant other than nutrient transport. This is fine to let the plant do this, however come spring you will have one of two options. Let the growth stay (new growth on top will be thicker), or prune it back. The downside to etiolated growth is that it will be thinner, and wont be able to support as much weight. It will also be more sensitive to frost and heat. If you keep your plants support in something like a trellis the lack of support can be mitigated and probably isn’t too big a deal. If you live in a climate with violent temperature swings, it may be best to prune it back.
Image showing thin etiolated growth.
Image showing thicker non etiolated growth.
