Goodluck

Thanks keri_guy. A lot more blooms opened and I tried cross-pollinating a few. If fruit develops, I will wait until they are ripe and then need to cut back the DF. The dead, tree trunk they were growing on rotted from the base and is now leaning on this small 'gazebo'.

I got a nub last winter and now it is three feet tall..I put him in his permanent spot and (accidentally) spliced off the top .It rooted,and the sopt where the wire cut it has branched out into a hand shape!Im so excited!Yours is gorgeous!! :-) Thanks for giving me something to look forward to!

Nice, mine flowered a bit over a week ago. First time for me and looks like the fruit set now!

flagirl, good for you. I probably would have just discarded the whole thing. I don't know what my DF is because I might have a couple of different ones there as I got the cuttings from CRFGs a couple years ago.

noobfruit, congrats! The blooms on your DF looking amazing. I am not confident that any of my blooms that I hand-pollinated took. I was at a meeting Saturday and they talked about pollinating at night, which I didn't. Oh well ...

Do you have any tips on how to hand pollinate? Mine is finally getting flowers after having it about six years. The first flower bloomed by itself (and I missed it), but it has one large bud now and a bunch of small ones.

Can you collect pollen and save it for later? I have to hand pollinate my cherimoya, and I was told that the pollen is viable only for a few hours, and so I try to pollinate the female flowers as soon as I have both female and male flowers on the tree. When I tried to save the pollen overnight and use it the next morning, I was less successful.

I have a lot of epiphyllum (orchid cactus), and some of them now have fruit on them, but the flowers on those last for several days, and something else is pollinating them. I ate some of the fruit, and it was good but a bit bland.

Can you get fruit if you only have one plant? I read in the Australian forum that epiphyllum require cross-pollination to produce fruit. Can you cross-pollinate dragon fruit with a regular orchid cactus? One of mine has a bud that may open at the same time as the dragon fruit.

I might still get fruit on my dragonfruit!

Lars, these are two videos on youtube I watched to get info on pollinating. Ed Valdivia's video (2nd one) will tell you how long you can store pollen.
I used q-tips instead of a brush, and then went back and just broke off some anthers and rubbed those to the stigma. Don't know which method took, but I'm just happy some did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSO94SzoM7U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqrOkUAxYCE

I should have come back here to see your response. My pitaya bloomed last night, but I did not see it until this morning (8 AM)

I attempted to move pollen around but only used my hand instead of a brush. This is how it looked by 10:30 AMFortunately, I have a branch with more buds
and will be more careful about trying to pollinate the rest of the flowers, but I do not have an additional plants for cross pollination. I will store some pollen in the freezer from the next flower that opens, however.

I will let you know if I get fruit.

Please post photos of your fruit when it appears!

Lars, looks like only one fruit is hanging on in my pitahaya ( 1st photo above); the rest of the developing fruit dried up. When the one fruit gets ripe, I will post. I too see more buds so will try to better pollinate and do it at night. I believe I read that you didn't need another plant, just cross pollinate from a different flower on the same plant, and if only one flower, just do that one.

Eloise, some DF are self-fertile and you can use other flowers to fertilize them. Others need a different variety to properly fertilize. Some people grow the white varieties, which usually have a blander taste, just for cross-fertilization reasons.

Thanks Jason for the info. I did read that some DF are self fertile, but also read that on some, like mine, when the stigma is way longer than the anthers, it's harder for them to be pollinated by wind or insects. Or, something to that effect : ) I'm just learning about DF, and know that my stand of DF has different varieties planted together. Now if only each would produce, I might be able to know what I have.

Looks perfect. Those should ripen soon.

What else are you growing Eloise?

Thanks stanofh. One fruit for sure is developing nicely.

Nothing special. I have the usual fruits: citrus, stone fruit, guava, avocado, apple, pear, papaya, small plant of ice cream bean and rose apple, grapes, raspberries, blueberries, turmeric, ginger, cooking bay, passiflora, brugmansia, roses, lavender, bulbs, etc.

47 dragon fruits harvested today from the yard.

14 Physical Graffiti

13 Dark Star

10 Vietnamese Jaina

10 Unknown types

Wow, what a haul dangermouse! Besides eating them as is, do you prepare them any other way?

I know I have dehydrated them once, they must have been unremarkable or just so-so, because I haven't dried any since. But I was thinking to maybe puree some and then try making some DF fruit leather in the dehydrator. I do slice them and lay them on a baking sheet with waxed paper between layers and put them in the freezer, then once frozen transfer them to ziploc bags and keep in the freezer.
When I do the batch in the freezer, I do put the skins in the dehydrator and dry them out and then use them to make a tea type drink sometimes.

Maybe DF ice cream this year.

Mine bloomed again Sunday night, and this time I was careful to pollinate at 10 PM and use a brush, as recommended in the video. I have three more buds that should open in September, and so maybe I will get some fruit after all. Mine is supposed to be self-pollinating, according to the tag from the nursery, but I do not necessarily trust that. It is also hard to believe that it took six years before I got a single flower!

Mine also has new blooms, but I keep forgetting to go out at night to pollinate.

dangermouse, meant to ask, do you hand-pollinate?

Eloise; I hand pollinate..sometimes. If I do it is usually in the morning (between 6:00 and 7:00 depending on when the dogs want out) on days I do not work (on work nights I can't stay up that late to go out at night, and to busy getting ready for work in the morning to go out with a flash light and do anything). I've got 12 known varieties in the backyard and 4 unknown types out in the front. So in the morning when flowers are open, I just go out with a large water color paint brush (#11 ?) and a empty large yogurt container, swirl the brush in the stamen parts, brush the pollen that has fallen down to the petals in the container, swirl the brush in the container then swirl around the pistil and move along, flower to flower, plant to plant. So the second plant may also be getting pollen from the first and so on. Sometimes I may finish by redoing the first plant.

I did revisit the dehydrating Dragon Fruits (after thinking about the fruit leather). I thought I had done it before but must have been thinking about kiwi (which turned out pretty tart). Anyway ran a batch in the dehydrator last night and they came out pretty good. I cut the ends off the fruits, made a slit thru the skin length-wise, peeled the skin off, cut a small slice off one side so it wouldn't roll on the cutting board, and sliced thin (probably about 1/8 inch thick, had some that were thicker and they didn't dry out as well).

Ended up with this, pretty much like fruit leather, not crispy dried but still flexible

Thanks for all the info dangermouse. After reading your post, I went out this morning to hand pollinate, but there were some bees around. I figured they knew what they were doing so I left the area. If I ever get sufficient fruit, I will try doing the leather.

Update from the flower photo I posted earlier. I think this one is going to make a fruit. I hand pollinated it at 10 PM, as recommended. There were two more buds above it that opened, but I did not catch them until morning, and so my attempts to pollinate those may have been too late.I think it is too early to tell, but I will keep an eye on these two.

Looking good Lars! As of the 9/7/16, this is what mine looks like. I feel like it's taking too long to ripen so I can eat it, lol! Do squirrels or raccoons eat DF?

You can always put some netting around it, if you are afraid of squirrels or raccoons. I use the netting that onions or potatoes sometimes come in. We have a solar-powered critter repeller right under our pitaya right now, but it is there to repel raccoons from our fountains. I put netting over a pot where I planted some turmeric, to make sure that it does not get dug up. I think birds stole the last turmeric I planted.

I do not think that the second two blossoms from my plant will make fruit, as they are not developing like the other one. I say this because they have turned yellow, and the other one is green and getting larger. Maybe next year I will have a lot more flowers, as the plant is quite large now. I'll also have to be more careful about pollinating in the evening.

Good idea Lars, I will add a netted onion bag to the fruit. I ended up getting quite a few blooms, but none seem to have taken. If I get to taste the one turning red, I will be satisfied this year because it's home-grown! Good luck with yours.

Anyone here from SoCal Granada hills 91344 or nearby? You can stop by my place and see the dragon fruit trees yourself and have as many cut you likes... I have many varieties and some I don't know the name.. I just replant half of my dragons fruits trees and eliminate many varieties not so productive or small fruit size. And if anyone out there have cherimoya dr. White or big sister please sell me a few cut so I can grafted on my newly planted cherimoya fino de jete.

Tuan, I would love to see your DF setup. Your message board isn't setup so I could send you a message. Please email me so I can provide you with some info about cherimoya: luera_2001@yahoo.com Thanks.

I had to revive this thread to publicly thank Tuan. Today, he sent me home with several cuttings from his DF plants, a pole with rebar that he uses to grow his DF on, plus I got to taste one of his DF taking the reminder home. I always hear that gardeners are generous people, and Tuan proved it's true :-) Thanks again Tuan, it felt like Christmas with all those goodies I got!

Wow, that's huge! Tuan, is this from your plants or from your travels?

Fantastic. Nice home grown Mangoes too!

Would you swap some cuttings?
Have succulents

Wow nice setup you have there Tuan! I need to do something like that with with my Dragonfruit. Right now, I have a Dragonfruit climbing up my Starfruit lol!

eloise, nice haul! You need to post pictures of what you got :) How are they doing now?

~Sjn