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Cacti & Succulents

Cultivating pitaya (dragonfruit) from seed? 'Ornamental' or not?

15 years ago

Hi - I've discovered I love dragonfruit (pitaya), which has been described as a cactus. I'm just toying with the idea of growing it and am wondering a few things, if anyone's tried this before...

- How do these things look in a backyard - are they pretty, or a little rough-and-tumble? (I've seen some pics, still wavering.)

- How hard/easy are they to cultivate from seed (I think the few seeds I've got are Peruvian pitaya) and how many years till they're fruit-bearing?

I live in coastal L.A. and am trying to put in a few plants that are decorative and still productive (noshable). I can stick with the SE Asian herbs and a few other things, or branch into tasty fruit (we have a loquat tree already). Equally, I can with some diligence likely locate a supplier of the fruit at a local Asian grocer for far less than the $3 apiece that this tasty fruit sold for at the farmer's market! (That is, I don't have to plant it to sate my newly-acquired dragonfruit appetite.)

Thanks.

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Comments (4)

cactus_lord
15 years ago
1.) It look pretty good, but as for any plant it only looks as good if you look after it. If you leave a dragonfruit then you get a load of brown, old, dead segments at the bottom of the plant. If you're after flowers then this isnt the cactus for you. The flowers only open at night and start to rot the second they close. Overall, it looks a bit scruffy once it puts its areal roots out and it gets massive and will climb anything nearby.

2.) Cultivation from seed is really easy, but they germinate the best when fresh out of the fruit. I just put a scoop of pulp in a pot, covered it with compost, left it for a week and i got loads of seedlings. Mine havent fruited yet, but ill have a guess at about 4-5 years from seed.

If youre looking for another nice looking and productive plant, then you could try Mangoes or Papayas.
debbysunshine
15 years ago
Living here in San Diego we can buy dragon fruit sometimes too. About eight years ago I found a piece of the cactus 12" and put it in a pot and it grew and grew arms everywhere and last year had to cut off some of the arms so nobody would get killed hitting it. In all that time I've had 2 fruits last year and very small and one flower this year but died and dropped off so no fruit. They get very huge and pictures of the pitya farms on the net are fascinating but truly it's just another very big cactus that has to reach atleast 10 lbs. before it can bloom. Some very old homes here in town have Pitya running over an arbor and you see lots of flowers but very little fruit. We are so lucky to live in Ca with all of it's unique grocery stores.. Just enjoy !!!
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cinnamonsworld
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for the great comments. They do look like they can get pretty big and unwieldy. (Though as to the 'not much fruit' thing, I have to say we have a loquat tree that was a lot like that and then it must've hit its 7-year bloom cycle or whatever... it produced bushels last year, and was pretty good the year before. No idea exactly why.)
dufflebag2002
15 years ago
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