Learning from Braxton: growing Dragonfruit

The CCAG has been growing a wide assortment of Asian fruits such as jackfruit, and recently: Dragonfruit. In this post: we learn how dragonfruit is grown at the CCAG.

"I recently had dragonfruit when I was at LA," said Rob. "My friend Braxton told me he grew dragonfruit too. He grows all sorts of things, passion fruit, grapes, olives... His garden sounds way more attractive then the CCAG's Mikey's Farm or the Atlas Nature Preserve. He's also talked to me about his butterfly sanctuary he has. Butterflies rarely come to the CCAG, but that's on my end. I haven't planted a single flower since 2021!" says Rob. The Atlas Nature Preserve is a pile of dry dirt and a hole as a pond. The Mikey's Farm's Onion plants just got removed for the fourth time because of poor soil quality. "The soil was too thick to absorb water," says Rob. "I'm better off growing dandelions. At least they are edible," Rob Jokes.

"I never eaten dragonfruit before but I knew it came from a cacti," he said. "Cacti are fairly easy to take care of because they don't need to be watered often." When Rob went to La, he picked ten yellow dragonfruit seeds to grow.

There are three methods of growing dragonfruits, from seed, from cutting or grafting.

From seed: The Yellow dragonfruit seeds were sown and grown in the TMAD, where temperatures range between 60-80F. "They aren't frost tolerant, so they'd die if it goes below 50F." Dragonfruits seeds look like small black sesame seeds and are edible. The seed itself is best sown in moist soil with warm temperatures, ideally during the summer. The dragonfruit plants usually mature in 4 years.

Dragon fruit seedlings on October 12, 2023.

The second method is easier. It's called cuttings. You can buy a piece of a cactus (thus called "cuttings) and you stick it in the soil or water. Apparently that's supposed to be faster and grows fruit in a short amount of time.

The last method is grafting, and it is supposed to be easier than seeds too. You cut off a bit of a cactus and tape it on to a severed stem of another cactus of the same species. Since there are many varieties of dragonfruit, you can grow two varieties on one branch. One guy even grafted a tomato plant onto a potato plant, thus creating "Ketchup and Fries." They are both in the Solanaceae family, also including Eggplants and the notorious Jimson Weed.

Dragonfruits belong to a tropical cactus family, meaning you won't see it growing in any desert or TMAD. They also differ from regular cacti because they trail on the ground. Like peas and beans, they require a stake, or trellis to survive. At night during the summer, they flower, and in some cases hand pollination is required.

The dragonfruit remain in Rob's room, because they are too small to be planted outside.