We have had a lot of rain over the last month and my Dragon Fruits are growing like mad. It is now spring and the Dragon Fruits are getting a little bit of sunburn again. They still have a bit of growing to do before they are of much help.
They are shading but open bushes that let a lot of light through (in my case Banksias). My plants have a little trouble with sunburn so I have started an experiment by planting bushes amongst them. I wonder if this it the main reason commercial growers keep their weeping branches so far from the ground. I keep a thick layer of mulch to suppress the weeds but occasionally when I get a weed it can be a little tricky to reach. One problem I find with my method is weeding. I am not sure if this is the perfect way to get the most fruit from them but it works for me and requires little maintenance. The plants gradually get taller as they grow on top of themselves. They have lots of side shoots coming from the main stems that weep over as they get long and eventually touch the ground. Now I grow them without any supporting structure. After about 2 years I pulled out all the supports. I had fence posts for them to grow up in the beginning but the roots didn’t stick to them well enough to support their weight. My experience with metal star pickets agrees with Bronwyn’s suggestion – my plants wouldn’t cling to the star pickets (neither galvanised nor rusty ones). I don think a supporting structure should be more than 1.5m tall if you want to reach all your fruits without a ladder. So if a Dragon Fruit is planted against a palm tree it may just get to the top before it decides to branch out. I can’t remember if all the fruit was on the weeping branches but it is quite probable.įrom my limited experience with Dragon Fruits I think if they are given the opportunity to climb they will and this will be at the expense of side branches. Their tallest branch was a bit more than a metre high. Both plants were loosely tied to a star-picket and wept back down. It was in a different location and I bought it from a different place (Bunnings) so it may have been slightly different genetically. Apart from a couple of cuttings I took it died in the frost. My other slightly younger plant that was half the size of the one pictured had produced 5 flowers & fruits (all in the one season).
It has only produced 2 flowers & fruits so far. The wounds from the frost damage have sealed up and there is no sign of disease. This removed all the brown mush, which was starting to stink as it rotted. Here is the same Dragon Fruit 2 weeks after I blasted it with the hose jet (about 8 weeks after the frost). It appears undamaged from the summer sun and the frost. The yellow one may be slightly more sheltered and had no new shoots or growing tips. I also have a yellow Dragon fruit that grows right next to the one above.
It has only been 2 weeks since the frost so I will see how the damage and then recovery in spring goes. The damage in this early stage appears similar to the mush that lettuce that has been frozen and thawed looks like. All new shoots and growing tips were destroyed. Much of the larger mature stems had edge damage but the centre is OK. Some large flat areas facing up are blistered but the edges were ok. Here on the Gold Coast we got a very localised frost (the first in the 7 years i have been here.īefore the frost the dragon fruit had some damage from the sun and looked like a milder version of what is in the above photo.
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