0:05

We're

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back

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at the Epic Homestead with Richard Lee

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grafting dragon fruit, my personal dragon fruit

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mentor and deity, the

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god of dragon fruit. We're back. So

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we talked, Rich, about your story,

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how dragon fruit grow. But

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if someone's wanting to get into it this year,

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if you're listening to this podcast, the time it

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comes out, Jan, Feb, March, it's a good time

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to get started. So why don't we

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start them off with the top

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five varieties that someone should consider?

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Okay. So glad we're getting into

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this because this question does pop up a lot

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and this is going to set you up to

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want to grow dragon fruit long term. Nothing

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sucks more than growing dragon fruit, not being able to

0:53

try to fruit and then giving up without ever getting

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a reward, right? That could be the saddest thing in

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the world. And that's a

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story that I hear a lot of the times until

1:01

people run into my dragon fruit channel and grafting dragon

1:03

fruit. I actually have a video about that. What are

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the top five beginner varieties to grow? So

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if you guys are ever interested, you can go there and check it

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out. But top five would be

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sugar dragon. We talk a little

1:14

bit about sugar dragon, how they're self fertile, but

1:16

you need to hand pollinate them. But

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I still think it's worth it because one, they produce

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massive amount of fruits and they do a

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lot of pushes. The dragon fruit

1:26

don't only fruit once during the summertime, they

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can actually have four to five waves. So

1:31

if you're lucky and you live in climates, that's

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really good and you can get three waves. But

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if you're in a condition where we are, California,

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we can get like four or five waves of

1:40

them pushing flowers and fruits out. So you can

1:42

eat them four or five times throughout the year.

1:44

Sugar dragon, self fertile, but you need to hand

1:46

pollinate. Smaller fruit too. Smaller

1:48

fruit, but they make up in the amount of fruits that can

1:50

produce it throughout the whole year. Yeah. And

1:53

so my garden is far and

1:55

away the most prolific one. We have like a bushel

1:57

full of the sugar dragon. It's

2:00

nice to, it's not always so bad that something

2:02

is small because sometimes that flavor is like more

2:04

concentrated, but also it's more of like a little

2:06

personal snack instead of going out. I mean there's

2:08

one, I forgot if it's

2:10

Red Laverne or Red Jane, I

2:12

think it's Red Laverne. We saw a

2:14

3.2 pound fruit off of Red Laverne. So like

2:17

you need a family for that. Yeah,

2:19

exactly. You're not going to finish 3 pounds.

2:21

You can't even if you try it. You'd have a hard time

2:23

in the restroom probably after that. Yeah, you'll go right after you

2:25

finish. You'll have a really hard time. But

2:27

okay, so Sugar Dragon. And that's

2:29

readily available. And if someone wants

2:31

to know where to get all these, do you have a good

2:33

source right now? Sugar Dragon,

2:35

yeah. Sugar Dragon is probably one

2:38

of those beginner varieties that everybody

2:40

has them. It's kind of like a staple. Like

2:42

when you're starting tomato, what's your common tomato

2:44

variety? Yeah, you'd have like a, I don't

2:46

know, like a sweet 100 cherry

2:48

or something like that. So if

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you're a Dragonfruit grower and you're into growing

2:52

Dragonfruit, most of the time you're going to

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have Sugar Dragon already and it's

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very easy to find. They're relatively great in price too.

2:59

They go for about 10 to 15 dollars for cutting.

3:01

That's not bad. Yeah, and they can go up, you

3:03

know, all the way up to like 75 to 100

3:05

dollars cutting. Depends on what the size of this. Depends

3:07

on how the rarity is, what size, what flavor you're

3:09

looking for. Yeah. And that's the cool thing

3:11

about Dragonfruit is, you know, they can all have

3:13

different turks. Yeah. Some

3:15

can taste like super tropical. Some has the coconut hints

3:18

in it. That is so true. And I didn't really

3:20

believe you, frankly, because the thing that happens a lot,

3:22

and we'll get to the next Dragonfruit varieties in a

3:24

second as I share the stories. Ever

3:27

since I got into it, I've been making videos

3:29

on Dragonfruit and sharing my love of it. Yeah.

3:32

And the thing that I always hear is like, why

3:34

are you so obsessed with this bland kiwi? And I'm

3:36

like, you just don't know, man, because when you harvest

3:39

a Dragonfruit, it doesn't ripen off

3:41

the plant. Right. Right. So

3:43

to transport it, you have to harvest it early.

3:45

So anything by default you're buying from a grocery

3:47

store is simply unripe. Yeah. And

3:50

so you never get the flavor unless you have it right off the

3:52

plant, which is why you should be growing it at home.

3:54

Okay. So let's go with Dragon. Yeah.

3:57

What's our next shot? Second one will be American Beauty.

4:00

And this one is just like vitamin

4:02

white, but it

4:05

tastes fantastic better. Yeah. Their flavor is

4:07

like very berry-like. You're going to get

4:09

the very berry grape texture-ish flavor from

4:11

American Beauty. They're self-fertile and

4:14

self-pollinating. So this is the type where

4:16

you can just forget about it. Easy.

4:18

Just water it. When it flowers, it

4:20

will pollinate itself. Yeah. 35,

4:22

40 days, come and harvest the fruit. American Beauty is

4:24

the one that I have eaten, actually, went up to

4:26

your place. Yeah. When we did that big tour. Yeah.

4:28

I ate it, and I think the way I compared

4:30

it was when you go to the Sweet

4:32

Factory as a kid. Yeah. Yeah.

4:35

There's those raspberry and blackberry little gumdrop

4:37

candies with all the dots on them.

4:39

Yeah, I remember. It kind of tastes

4:41

like that. Yeah, yeah. It tastes like

4:43

that. Almost like you soaked

4:45

that in water, and it was like

4:48

that's the juice or something. Yeah. I don't know

4:50

how to put it, but hopefully I'm not making

4:52

that too unappetizing. No, no, no, no. That's like,

4:54

yeah, I get like a candy, berry flavor. Yeah.

4:56

You get like that water gushiness, water down from

4:59

all the juices of a dragon fruit. Yeah. But

5:02

yeah, it's still really good and staple too. You

5:04

can- Easy to grow. Easy to grow. Again, that

5:07

pollen can be used to

5:09

cross-pollinate anything. Anything. Yeah. So,

5:11

Sugar Dragon, American Beauty, those two are

5:13

just so superior because they also flower

5:15

very early in the season. Okay. So,

5:17

if you have a dragon fruit that

5:19

likes to flower during later mid-season, you're

5:21

going to have all this pollen ready.

5:23

So, what I do is I take

5:25

pollen and I freeze them. Okay.

5:27

You can freeze pollen and they're good up to

5:29

like six to eight months. Whenever,

5:32

let's say, I don't have any Sugar Dragon

5:34

or American Beauty's opening that night, and

5:37

I have a self-stir a variety that needs cross-pollination

5:39

from a different variety, I can just go to

5:41

my freezer, whip out those pollen, and

5:43

then pollinate them, and we're good. And I think you've

5:45

done that on your live before. I did. No, I

5:47

did do it. I'm sort of dabbling

5:49

with some of the more advanced techniques, which we're going to

5:51

do an episode on some of the pro techniques you can

5:53

do once you get into dragon fruit. So,

5:55

we've got American Beauty, we've got Sugar

5:57

Dragon. Sugar Dragon. What's our next show?

6:00

We've got Condor. Oh,

6:02

yeah. Okay, I forgot about

6:05

Condor. Yeah. Yeah. So Condor

6:07

is related to American beauty.

6:10

Their genus is a Guatemala lensis. So

6:13

those type of flavor, once you hear like Guatemala

6:16

lensis, you just know they're going to be good.

6:18

They always have like the same American

6:20

beauty flavor profile, like a

6:23

little bit of the berry. Yeah, but

6:25

they can either be sweeter or they

6:27

can be more tardy. The

6:29

thing with that type of variety is

6:31

they can be very sweet or very

6:33

tardy versus Vietnam white, it's just bland.

6:35

You don't have any of those contrasts.

6:38

So yeah, Condor is also a very good

6:40

one. Self fertile,

6:43

but doesn't like its pollen. Oh,

6:45

interesting. So it's like it doesn't set as

6:48

easily. It sets, but the

6:50

fruit doesn't grow big. Oh,

6:52

so it prefers a cross. It can do on it. It

6:55

can grow fruit about like usually Condors are

6:57

like this big, you'll get like one pound

6:59

of a baseball. Yeah, easily. But

7:02

if you pollinate it with its own pollen,

7:04

they just kind of big grow, but they're

7:06

like the smallest golf ball fruit. Weird. Is

7:08

the flavor difference? The flavor is the

7:10

same, but the fruit just looks immature for

7:12

some interesting. It's like it likes his pollen,

7:14

but it doesn't love its pollen. I

7:16

haven't heard of that quality before. That's interesting.

7:18

Yeah. So that's something I just finally started

7:20

realizing because there was this whole like talk

7:23

and form about going how Condor is self

7:25

stirrer or self fertile and no one could

7:27

really pinpoint what it was. And you figured

7:29

it out. Yeah. I'm like, it's self fertile.

7:31

It just doesn't like its own pollen. So

7:33

you basically did an experiment. Yeah. Right. Crossing

7:35

it, crossing it and then doing it, tying

7:37

a net over. So bees don't come in

7:39

actually. I mean, that's classical. When we do

7:42

for our seed company, Botanical Interests, when we do growing

7:45

out of a particular variety, we talk to

7:47

one of our production growers and we say,

7:49

Hey, we want this particular tomato. They do

7:51

the same exact thing. They're taking the parent

7:53

lines and crossing and making sure that exactly

7:55

what they want to cross crosses and all

7:57

the bags and all that. So yeah. It's

8:00

really cool to see the parallels. So Condor, then

8:02

we have what? What's our next

8:05

one? Condor, so Vietnamese white would

8:07

be one of my, this

8:10

is for anyone that just wants to eat dragon

8:12

fruit, want to go through the process and

8:14

just- Wants to play the game. Wants to play the game.

8:17

Everybody that gets into dragon fruit grows this

8:19

variety. Everyone goes through

8:22

this first. And it just sets you

8:24

up to understand the whole process

8:26

of how it goes. How

8:28

they like to grow. You can

8:31

just basically observe. And then once you get confident

8:33

enough, you can go and even collect the pollen

8:35

from the Vietnamese white, just to get your hands

8:37

experience with everything, the whole process of it. You

8:39

know what? I think that's a good way to

8:41

put it. It's your first dragon fruit. And

8:43

maybe it's only their first season. If

8:46

you get hooked, you won't be, like there's no,

8:48

we get not mine in my yard. But

8:52

it is probably the one you gave me or

8:54

one of the ones you gave me very early

8:56

on because you're right. It's so damn easy to

8:59

grow. Not much to say in the flavor. Still

9:01

certainly better if you eat it from your

9:03

garden than if you buy it from the

9:05

store. Obviously way cheaper. So Vietnam white is

9:07

our fourth. What is our fifth? Our fifth.

9:09

Our fifth would be Pink Panther. I

9:12

don't think I've eaten or grown that one yet

9:14

actually. I don't think. So Pink Panther is

9:16

a sister of Sugar Dragon. But

9:19

the flavor of that one is like

9:21

crystallized sugar. So if you

9:24

are somebody that likes, have

9:26

a very sweet tooth, you cannot miss

9:28

on this. You can harvest,

9:30

and why Pink Panther is one of the

9:33

five that's on there is because you can

9:35

literally harvest this fruit green and

9:37

it'll still taste like sugar, like crystallized

9:39

sugar. Yeah. It wants to be red

9:41

in the end. It wants to be red at the end. And

9:43

once it gets red, it just, the

9:47

firmness of the flesh will change but the

9:49

flavor just gets sweeter, sweeter, sweeter. So it's

9:51

a little softer flesh. Yeah, softer flesh. But

9:53

you can harvest it early. Interesting.

9:56

And get that firm flesh and a

9:58

little bit of acid in it and have that. So

10:00

it's almost ripe when it's unripe is one

10:02

way to put it. Exactly. Flavor profile. Flavor

10:04

profile. Huh. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, I might have

10:06

to snag one of those cuttings sometime. I

10:08

got you, man. The five varieties for you guys

10:10

to start with. Tomorrow we're going to get into

10:13

some of the more clever, I

10:15

get to advance techniques for growing dragon fruits. Stay

10:17

tuned, good luck in the garden, and keep on

10:19

growing. I

10:22

don't know if you know this, but

10:24

the Beat Podcast is not the only

10:26

podcast in the Epic Gardening Podcast Network.

10:28

We have a show called In Search

10:31

of Soil hosted by none other than

10:33

Diego Futter, a friend of mine, an

10:35

incredible gardener, and also the man behind

10:38

our Epic Six and Epic Four-Seed Trays.

10:40

His show is about an hour long.

10:42

It's an in-depth conversation with soil scientists

10:44

and experts on how to cultivate the

10:47

very best soil, which as we know,

10:49

helps you cultivate the very best garden.

10:51

You can find it at In Search of Soil,

10:54

wherever you listen to podcasts. And

10:58

I'll see you next time.