Рет қаралды 518
Hi folks. I had some very good luck here. For some time now I'd decided that the only Dragon Fruit I wanted to propagate was the Columbian Red Supreme, and recently I met a Lady in the Oz Rare Fruit FaceBook group who just gave me some cuttings, no charge. A number of times people have offered to sell them to me and I was very tempted, and planned to buy some one day. But these just came to me for free, I only had to pay for postage. So how lucky is that? I see some hobbie growers and even commercial farms have a range of different varieties. But in my view a lot of them, especially the whites, don't make the grade so why bother?
Dragon Fruit flowers are mostly only open at night and some commercial growers spend many a long night cross pollinating their Dragon Fruit flowers by hand, so they will bare fruits. You see unless the varieties are self-fertile, or self pollinating, they need to be pollinated by human hands and that's very labour intensive.
Other Dragon fruit farms grow only the white fleshed fruits. The whites are usually self pollinating and very vigorous heavy bearing cactus and the fruit are big and heavy too. Overall they are some of the most easy Dragon Fruit to grow, and they deliver big heavy yields. BUT in my view the white Dragon Fruit are a waist of space need to be ploughed back into the ground. They taste like water for God's sake, why pay $5 or $6 for a fruit that tastes like water? hahaha. I really feel the oversupply, saturation of white Dragon Fruits on the market is giving Dragon Fruit a bad name. Apparently some home grown white Dragon Fruits can be a little better, but still I cannot understand why people bother with them and I cringe every time I see them.
I raised some Columbian Reds from seed and have been growing them for 20 years. The flavour of my reds is absolutely superb, extremely good. I've never tasted a better Dragon Fruit. But mine are not "Columbian Red Supremes", so my cacti don't bear a lot of fruit. Mine are not self pollinating and I've found over the years it can be quite difficult to fertilise those flowers and get a good crop, particularly if there's heavy rain around.
That's why as soon as I found out everything about these "Columbian Red Supremes" I knew they were the plants for me. I've been told they taste exactly like my reds AND they are self pollinating, so they taste great and bear huge crops with very little effort, in any weather, rain hail or shine. Time will tell when I test this variety out thoroughly, but in my view this is the ideal Dragon Fruit. I toy with the idea of growing quite a few one day and again this is the variety I want to grow... I feel there is no need to grow other varieties, unless they 1. Taste really good and 2. Self pollinating
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