What I love most about gardening is eating what I grow.  Especially when I get to eat something that can’t be bought.  Case in point, the dragon fruit.  Have you ever seen or tasted a dragon fruit (a.k.a. pitaya/pitahaya)?  The bright pink fruits are shaped like small footballs and adorned with lime green “fins”.   The variety occasionally available (for $5 a piece!) in specialty groceries is called Vietnamese Jaina.  Though it’s generally regarded as the dragon fruit with the least interesting flavor, it is as refreshing as it is beautiful.  Imagine how good the best flavored varieties must taste!  I did imagine this, and then I ordered some vine cuttings.

Dragon fruits come in at least four main types.  White flesh with pink skin, white flesh with yellow skin, red flesh with pink skin, and purple flesh with pink skin.  You can grow some varieties from seeds, root any variety from cuttings of a living vine, or purchase plants.  Though sometime I would like to try growing pitaya from seeds, this time I opted to try rooting cuttings from named varieties.  Cuttings are surprisingly affordable, and I ordered 3 for $10 from ebay.  One white flesh type called Guyute, one red flesh type called American Beauty, and one purple flesh type called Purple Haze.  Information about many named varieties of dragon fruit can be found here: Pine Island Nursery

I ordered my vine cuttings in early April, set their bottom ends (there is a top and bottom, and the vine should be marked when you receive it) into individual pots of organic soil in my kitchen window under some grow lights.  I watered once every three days per the instructions, and I waited, and waited.  Once a week I pulled each cutting out of the soil to check for roots, and each week, nothing.  Eventually, my Purple Haze cutting started to rot.  It became infested with some tiny white worms, and turned mushy beneath the soil line.  Not willing to give up on the variety I was most excited to taste (it’s described as having a grape-kiwi flavor), I cut off the affected part of the vine and left the rest of it it to dry on my kitchen counter for about a week.  After a good callous formed along the cut edge, similar to what I had seen on the vine cuttings when they first arrived, I replanted it and hoped for the best.

In mid-may, the weather finally warmed enough to move the vines outside.  None of my pitaya cuttings had rooted yet, but I was determined not to give up on them.  Finally, after a few weeks in the sun, the Guyute vine sprouted roots!  I suspect the hot weather encoraged it to grow.  This week, the Purple Haze cutting sprouted roots too, and Guyute has already begun producing new top growth!  I can almost taste the juicy unknown flavors.  If all goes according to plan, I expect to harvest my first home-grown dragon fruits within 1-2 years.  Of course, this tropical cactus will have to be grown in a pot and moved indoors for winter.  Supposedly they like these conditions, and even thrive in a root-bound situation.  More dragon fruit updates to follow!