The First Edible Dragonfruit

Here it is! The first pitaya we harvested from the plant growing over the wall from the neighbor's property. I'm not sure what kind of gardening this would be....YOU plant, I reap??? We have a tall ladder thanks to the cable guys, so Pablo climbed up and cut back the vine that was choking this poor pitaya plant.  It was so happy it gave us one fruit for starters.  It was delicious!

The fruit above was harvested(big harvest) on the 1st of September. A few flowers opened up over the first week of September.  I know I posted these kinds of photos last year when we had a few flowers....but this freak of nature that opens up for one night, then creates a wonderful fruit at its base amazes me.

This information quoted below I copied from a website called Foodlywise.  It descibes the health benefits of dragonfruit, more commonly known here as pitaya.  It's written in poor English, but the info is worthwhile.

"One special health benefit of dragon fruit which has been verified by the authors of this web site is the special dragon fruit health benefit that dragon fruit helps control levels of glucose blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes (and type 1 diabetes by some reports). This is one of the health benefits of pitaya fruit in addition to the pitaya fruit nutrient profile being full of dietary fiber and Vitamin C. The pitaya nutritional benefits even include a high level of pitaya fruit antioxidant levels. All these great dragon fruit nutrients make fresh dragon fruit or dried dragon fruit both great additions to a healthy diet - and you get the nutrition benefits of dragon fruit from the dried or fresh fruit just as well."


Here is the pitaya cactus reaching over to live on our side of the wall.  It had 13 flowers ready to open.  I kept my eye on them.  In this photo, they still have a couple days....

Voila!  What a great site to wake up to. They stay open for a day so the bees can do their thing, then they just disintegrate and fall off, leaving behind the green base which becomes your tasty dragonfruit.  I was surprised how tasty the fruit is.  Usually I stay away from food with little seeds, they all get stuck in my teeth and that annoys me.  But the flavor was light and sweet.  It is tasty when juiced, but it turns a funny gray color that isn't too appetizing. It would be nice with vodka.