UPDATE! See "The Rest of the Story," below
It's similar to a prickly pear or pitaya in that it grows on a cactus. Imagine my wife's surprised pleasure when she found some plants on sale at our local farmers market.
We grow them in a lonely corner of our backyard, just behind the gate, where they get some water from a nearby sprinkler head. They grown like crazy and get very top heavy, necessitating the tomato cages and stakes that you see.
After a couple of years of lots of growth, we finally got a bloom. Beautiful white flowers that last about half a day.
Unfortunately, we only got the one flower so there was no partner to pollinate it. There are a couple of buds on the plant now, we're crossing our fingers that we'll get fruit in the next few months.
January, 2013 - ...and now, "The Rest of the Story..."
Well, one of the extra blooms opened and, surprise, it pollinated. Soon, it was obvious that a fruit was developing and started to turn pink.
We kept an eye on it, our one and only...and first...dragon fruit. At Christmas, it seemed like it could ripen no more so we picked it along with some of our citrus.
Tonight, we cut it open and tasted it. The good news is that if you don't like your fruit really sweet, this just has a very light sweetness to it. The bad news is that if you DO like your fruit really sweet...like we do...then it tastes nice and clean but a little bland.
Oh well, we'll keep the plants and see how they taste next year.
Darryl
Copyright 2012 - Darryl Musick
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Such a beautiful bloom... way cool that you can grow this. Here's to two blooms next year! Waaay too hot and waaay too cold in my gardens for such an experiment.
ReplyDeleteIf you could get one cheap, I'd give it a shot. Maybe half to protect it in winter but extreme heat doesn't bother these on bit. We get a few days down in the upper 20s each winter and it doesn't phase them either.
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