harveyc

The Pitahaya Festival in Irvine, CA on Saturday was a fun day, albeit uncomfortably hot. Between trading with Leo and some other friends at the festival and getting some cuttings from the trial there as well, I've probably added another 8-10 varieties and am now up to about 35. Kinda crazy, I think.....

At the trial they don't do any hand pollination and most varieties (19 formally on trial with another 20+ also planted) produce quite well with the exception of Valdivia Roja which opens up late and doesn't get pollinated very well from bees, etc. One plant of this selection had 28 out of 28 flowers drop due to lack of pollination. Physical Graffiti (Thomson's 1-S) is by far the most productive variety. Since I have a plant of this with fruit on it I was looking forward to tasting it at the festival. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with its taste. I tried it about five times, taking pieces from a different area of the large tray to make sure I was trying from different fruits but they all were similar. Haley's Comet was my favorite by a long shot and 'Delight' (another Thomson variety) came in second, both with decent sweetness. Oddly, the trial results show that Physical Graffiti averages a higher brix than Haley's Comet. Haley's Comet is one of the varieties I've now got added to my collection.

Edit: I'm hoping that Haley's Comet and some others in my collection might come close to Physical Graffiti's productivity with the use of hand pollination.

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Dragonfly

I have cuttings of several dragon fruit - Natural Mystic, Guyute, Purple Haze, Dark Star, Cosmic Charlie and Purple Star (I can't find anything about this one.) No room for all these so this should be interesting. They sure do like my South/West facing windows though.

I am hoping to give away a few cuttings (duplicates) in a swap I'm in on another website. Then I'll add some yellow dragon fruit cuttings.

harveyc

Here's another GIF time-lapse animated image, this time of a H. undatus 'George' flower. I increased the frequency and took 38 shots. The first 35 were 5-6 minutes apart and the last 3 were 15 minutes apart, starting at 6:46pm and ending at 10:48pm.

Instead of imbedding the image I'll include links since some folks might have a slow connection and not appreciate the large file.

http://www.chestnuts.us/GeorgeBloom.gif (600x600 pixels, 5.3 MB)
http://www.chestnuts.us/GeorgeBloomM.gif (200x200 pixels, 714 KB)

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sunfish

Cool

oakshadows

Beautiful work. Thanks

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sunfish

Good size Dragon Fruit

harveyc

Did you cross-pollinate that flower? My Physical Graffiti flower pollinated with its own pollen (by hand) is quite a bit smaller than the two other fruits on the same plant which I cross-pollinated. I don't know if that's because it's on a thinner/weaker branch or because of metaxenia as discussed in http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/4/469.full.pdf. Others have claimed cross-pollination results in larger fruit so I tend to think that's probably shown in my PG fruits as well.

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sunfish

I used it's own pollen. Out of 12 fruit three are large the others much smaller ?

harveyc

Did you have any other pitaya flowers that wildlife may have pollinated those flowers with?

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sunfish

Yes the White.Do Skunks count as wildlife ?

harveyc

I'd guess your larger fruits could have been patially pollinated by the white (H. undatus) by moths, bats, ants, bees, or other insects while the skunks simply wondered where the pleasant scent competing for attention was origin
ated from.

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Want Them All

I planted this in June 2010. This week, I saw flower buds for the 1st time. According to the label, Hylocereus polyrhizus does NOT need a pollinator. Does that mean I don't have to do anything, and these flowers will become fruits on their own? How does this "red" variety taste? I've never had one to eat.

On a related note, when you guys hand pollinate, do you take pollens from anthers in different flowers and stick them on stigmas from different flowers?

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harveyc

I wouldn't trust those labels but suspect it may be self-fertile but the pollen still needs to get from the anthers to the stigma. Until you know from experience that the flower will self-pollinate (i.e., flower has a stigma close to the anthers) or you have some form of wildlife that will spread the pollen to the stigma, you should hand-pollinate. It appears likely that it is best to use pollen from another variety but, if it's a self fertile variety, you can pollinate with anthers from the same flower (it makes no difference if you pollinate from another flower on the same plant as the pollen is identical).

There are different selections of polyrhizus but some are sweet and tasty but some consider them to have an "earthy" taste. Report what you think after you have yours!

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Want Them All

Thanks harvey!!

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sunfish

Can we see the back of the label ?

harveyc

I think those DF bought at Lowe's, etc. are supplied by LaVerne

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Want Them All

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sunfish

Same fruit 2 days later

jreidsma

Hope everyone doesn't mind if I join

I am the proud new owner of two dragon fruit plants (Thanks Janan) and I have run into some questions. As I have never had these before.

I got Guyute, and American beauty. Both are cuttings and should start shooting out roots soon (Hopefully).

I live in a small mobile home (trailer) though, and these plants will be indoors year round. So I am rather limited on space and so I need to figure out how much room these plants would need to I can get everything ready for them. I know it will be a while until they get bigger but I like to have everything planned out

So Google hasn't been much help yet. So I figured I would come here

About how big would these two plants need to get before they would flower and hopefully fruit?

And then about how big of a pot would each plant need to be that big.

Nice pictures everyone These look like cool plants

Thanks, and hope everyone has a nice day

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sunfish

Harvey can answer this better then me.The plant will fruit at 5' ,you can keep it pruned .10gal. pot is plenty big