You've seen the Hayward Hylo's post I made?. My best tip is to keep side support for every foot of height.The cacti tend to snap under their own weight. Or keep the stems tied to each other with plastic tape so as not to girdle them as they grow.
With our low humidity they dont seem to be good clingers. They need help.

hello Racor, sorry for the delayed response,
right now my DF are not doing much, I let them get a little colder than I'd liked and a few are showing orange spots. My Physical Graffitti looks the best right now, I've allowed two branches to grow to the top trellis and then pinched them. One has sprouted into 3 branches, the other just started growing as a single again (will probably pinch again in spring).

some of the problems I ran into with my support setup were:
keeping the support above the soil to avoid long term wood rot
another worry was being top heavy and tipping when it was mature.
lastly I was concerned about eventually being able to repot. In theory I can remove one (or more)of the sides of my trellis base to trim the roots or add soil as needed.

as for soil, well drained is key. Perlite, CHC, sand, gravel, potting soil are some of what I use in my mix.

good luck, please post pics when you can,
-Ethan

in the future if you'd like to trade varieties of DF, drop me an email.

Here is what I came up with after stealing some ideas from pics of other growers.

2

mikesid, that is a simple neat way to trellis your dragonfruits.

Those dragonfruit have long sections. I have some Costa Rican Sunset cuttings with very short segments: Does anyone know if they should be trellised differently?

Not sure if there are different requirements based on section length but if you look closely in the pic you'll see how the roots latch on to the wood post. As long as the dragon fruit you have produces aerial roots I don't think you'll have a problem. Mine did not produce the roots until I trellised it. Now it's growing like crazy.
good luck

Thanks for the reply :) I have some others that produce the aerial roots but don't know if this one does. The sections look much shorter than the others. I will just go ahead and start the cuttings and see what they do.
I like your bougainvillea in the first photo.

All the cuttings I recieved form Redsea in early winter are now off and growing.All have arms or multiple arms and I plan on growing them outdoors this spring along a warm,old,redwood fence. I'm curious if anybody are familiar with Hylocereus of a thin stem stature?..they are like those ornamental climbers I have had-only these bear sweet fruit I hear.
Judging by the bougy in bloom and what looks like a huge Dypsis lutescens reflected in the window-your in south Florida,Mike?

For the benefit of the northern growers out there...

...it is possible to grow and fruit DF in a container in the north. I have 3 varieties in a 30 gallon container with a built-in trellis. I got fruit from two of them this past year. It is not the most beautiful plant in the GH, but it works. I have had large DF growing in what seem like impossibly small containers...like an 8 footer, multiple branches, in a 6" square container.

I grow mine in large bark/turkey grit mix.

I would suggest that you bring them in for the duration of winter. they would easily burn in zone six

pitaya are epiphythic, meaning they get air roots and can use them for nutrients. i grow them in buried containers to keep them growing instead of over rooting.

Mikesid, What type of wood is your post? Will DF roots latch on to treated wood post?

jlgarden, These things cling to anything they can. They also absorb nutrients from whatever it clings on to. It's very likely that they will latch on to a treated wood post. How SAFE are a chemically treated lumber in terms of effecting fruit, well that's another whole argument in itself.

This is updated picture of my trellis. Plants are doing well.

For what I can remember when I was at UC Irvine pitaya festival, they are using treated posts and the roots do not attach to them. As far as how safe, well I agree with Eggo on that one.

Eggo, the is a great setup you have there. One of the best ones I have seen. I have all mine DF growing in 15 gal containers.

wow Eggo,
that is the healthiest picture of a pitaya I've seen outside the ones from Thailand. Great color and size.

-Ethan

Some people in China/Vietnam/Thailand are starting to grow their DF in a different way. Instead of growing them really tall, they grow them in a pot and top them off at about 2-3 feet and flowers and fruit start growin off the single main branch. Hope this pic works

Very interesting photo Simon. I've seen photos of people growing pitaya in hanging pots but your photo shows a very straight forward way of doing it. Might have to try that myself.

glad you could get it to post,
-Ethan

wow they look really productive.

a local nursery has the same variety dragonfruit growing up a telephone pole and another he prunes around a 4 foot chainlink fence. the climbing one produces very few fruit and the pruned one flowers and fruits regularly.

thanks guys, my dragonfruit are blooming right now. The earliest bloom I get is from the Thai reds, there's maybe 3 dozen blooms so far...I'll update it with pictures later as it progress.

Simon, I am only guessing but I think that picture are of just new cuttings with attach fruit that are potted up. This makes it looks attractive for sale at local markets. Those look like 3 gallon pot size, I don't think you can get such vigorous fruit production from that. Also considering there are several plants in one pot. Of course i might be wrong.

Hey eggo, thats exactly what I thought too and it still might be true but my uncle hated his DF sprawling all over the place and topped it, just like in the pics and his DF started to fruit just as much as his fully grown taller plants. He planted several plants/pot and allowed several small branches to form. I'll try to post the pic if I can find it. He also has a cool Bonsai Cherimoya plant.

The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is how can such short plants provide enough photosynthesis to properly grow and sweeten up so many large fruits when there is so little surface area for photosynthesis?

@ Simon_grow

I am very interested in this technique for pitaya, do you or anyone else have any links on the process or any updates from experiences?

from what I have gathered from previous posts , a normal grown Pitaya plant is just cut at 24-36 inches.

questions I have are. were they grown in those small pots all along, or were they also cut at the base too and re-rooted?

When did they cut the large plant, when it was already at flowering or before?

how old was the original plant before they cut.

i am assuming nutrients are fed using drip irrigation into those tiny containers.

the plants are obviously for sale, it looks like they have ornamental fake fruit stringed to them in order to attract buyers to what they are. from my experience you want the drgonfruit to grow a few feet and then have trellis it can drape over or grown over a fenceline.

im trying to grow it up the side of my house and see if it will attach to the stucco, this is probably a result of my lack of space yet continuing need to cover everything in tropical plants

I'll try to find a pic of my uncles short fruiting DF. I'll also test it with one of my one cuttings and let everyone know how it goes. My uncle topped his plants in a pot when they were about 4ft tall and he also cut the side branches when they were about a foot or so. He had to prune occasionally to control for size and shape.

Now looking at the picture I posted, I'm pretty sure that the plants were grown in the typical fashion (Full Sized) and then the fruiting branches were cut and stuck into pots. If they were grown in the pots and fruited in those pots, I would expect a lot more side branching like I see on my uncles potted DF.

dragon fruit plants WILL NOT latch on to preasure treated wood. i found out that attaching burlap bags to the post will work though.

Do not use pressure reated wood