Dragon fruit flower to fruit

For regular dragon fruits, the flower-to-fruit process takes around 30 days. For the red-flowered Asunta, it takes 60 days. It's from 150 days for the yellow Palora.

If you're interested in this process, let's check it out below:

Bud to Flower (15-30 days)

Dragon fruit buds are the size of a cherry or grape. Going from bud to flower normally takes around 30 days. Sometimes it's 15, 22, 27 days and sometimes it's later than that.

When the bud grows bigger, it will look something like this. This is a 12-day-old bud. And if you haven't yet spotted it, the one we have here is the red variety. You can tell from the red tips all around.

And then the dragon fruit flower blooms:

Flower blooming (1 night)

Dragon fruit flowers bloom at night–around 7-9 pm. Not all flowers on the same branch will bloom at the exact same time. The flowers are huge and they have a really nice fragrance. The bloomed flowers last for only one night. And around 8 am the next morning, they start to droop down and wilt.

Thanks to this bending down movement, the pollen from the anthers (the male part) can easily fall into the stigma (the female part). Sometimes bees or moths help do the pollination job. And this is when the magic begins to happen.

Flower to Fruit (30-180 days)

If the pollination is successful, fruits will begin to develop after that. A 3-day-old dragon fruit may have the size of a small tangerine with its scales and skin still green. From this point to harvest, it may be 30, 60 or 150+ days.

When ripened, the skin and scales will turn more red. The size and weight of the fruit will also increase. A ripe Sugar Dragon weighs around 4-8 oz (113 - 220 grams) and reaches 4 in. (10 cm) in length. While some other ripe varieties may get up to 1-2 lbs (0.45-1 kg) in weight. This is a good time to harvest the fruits.

Days to harvest

Credits:

• refmad farms

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