This home gardener’s guide to growing dragon fruit in a glasshouse or greenhouse shares our experiences and lessons learned growing our own glasshouse dragon fruit. Our New Zealand garden is too cool for growing dragon fruit and other tropical/subtropical plants outdoors year round, with winter temperatures dropping below freezing. But we’ve successfully grown dragon fruit from cuttings all the way through to fully fruiting cacti in our glasshouse. Here’s how!
Getting to Know Dragon Fruit (Pitaya)
Dragon fruit is a prickly quick-growing climbing cactus/succulent, native to tropical and subtropical climates, with spectacular night blooming flowers and showy edible fruit. The cactus grows as a series of thick cacti stems with thin internode connectors and aerial climbing roots. New stem branches (and flowers/fruit) bud out from the sides of the thick stem portions.
Although the pulp of a dragon fruit is tasty and nutritious, I have to say that the fruit look far more exotic than their actual flavours. The taste is very mild, slightly sweet, and really kind of plain compared to their looks. But they’re still pretty great to grow and to eat.
Depending on the variety, dragon fruit can be pink, yellow, or white inside. The pulp has tiny seeds that are eaten along with the fruit. Because of its looks, dragon fruit or cut pieces of pulp are really nice in displays, platters, etc. But my favourite way to eat them is just sliced in half, where their skin (not edible) forms a natural bowl and the pulp can be eaten by the spoonful.
Preferred Growing Conditions
Climate
Dragon fruit cacti grow in tropical or subtropical conditions. If, like us, you’re keen to grow dragon fruit at home but don’t have a suitable climate, you’ll need to protect your dragon fruit plants from winter frosts and temperatures with a glasshouse, greenhouse, or grow indoors.
For any readers not familiar with Green in Real Life, we’re gardening in central New Zealand. Our climate is moderate, but far from subtropical. We have cool winters with short dark, often dreay days and night temperatures can drop below freezing, with occasional harsh frosts. But we’re successfully growing dragon fruit at home in our small unheated glasshouse. We’ll talk more about mimicking preferred conditions, or at least tolerable conditions, below.
Aspect
Dragon fruit cacti should be planted or positioned in full sun, with strong support framing for growth (see more below) and, if grown outdoors, for protection from strong winds. Although they do love full sun, if you have extreme sun or at peak summer in a glasshouse, you might need to give them some shading or filtering to avoid sunscald or stem damage.
Soil
Despite their classic cactus appearance, these are not desert cacti. Dragon fruit are native to areas with much richer soil and natural rainfalls. The cacti like free-draining rich soils, so choose and prepare your planting areas accordingly. Make sure the drainage (and/or control of rainfall or manual watering) is sufficient to avoid soggy or waterlogged roots, which can lead to rot.There’s a section later in our post with details on soil, feeding, watering, and general care.
Size and Spread
These are large plants, with vigorous growth. They have a tendency to spread and sprawl into a bit of a mess, especially if they’re not carefully trained and supported (see below). You’ll want to pick your planting position with care outdoors, and consider whether you’re willing to sacrifice a large portion of your glasshouse or greenhouse for growing in shelter for cooler climates.
Training and pruning can be used to limit the mature size and spread, but you’ll need around two meters for height/width if you’re hoping to grow fruit. Ours are a little smaller, since we need to stay under the glasshouse wall height and moderate space. They crown out over a custom box support frame at around 1.5m. I also prune and tip branches to keep everything within an allocated width and height so they don’t take over all the space in our glasshouse.
Unfortunately, they’re not the prettiest or well-structured of specimens, and that’s my fault. We transplanted and framed them too late (see below, don’t be like me), but we’re slowly and incrementally working the cacti back into a better form. It’s an ongoing compromise between corrections and not wanting to prune hard at once or sacrifice a full season’s production cycle.
Growing Dragon Fruit in a Glasshouse
Creating Tolerable Conditions in Cooler Climates
As noted above, if you don’t have the right climate for dragon fruit’s preferred growing conditions, you can try to create artificial climate that mimics their preferred conditions.
If you’re growing dragon fruit just for looks, you can easily keep a smaller specimen as a potted houseplant. But if you’re growing dragon fruit for their flowers and fruit, you’ll need to let your dragon fruit cactus reach quite a decent size. For a productive cactus, it will either be a very large indoor feature plant or you’ll want to create a suitable home for it somewhere outdoors.
Unless you’re just on the edge of suitable conditions, where relocating or covering on exceptionally cool nights might be enough to keep your cactus protected from frosts or freezing temperatures, you’ll need a glasshouse/greenhouse. If your climate is cold enough that temperatures drop below freezing inside your glasshouse, you’ll also need a heat source.
Our glasshouse is unheated, and our typical winter temperatures hover around freezing on clear nights, occasionally dipping below into the low negatives.
Permanent vs. Portable Plantings
Dragon fruit are large, heavy, prickly, dangly, and generally difficult plants to move at mature size. And imagine the prickle attack of trying to repot. Best to avoid that battle, if possible! If you’re growing a potted dragon fruit cactus to move inside or into shelter for your cool seasons, you’ll want to plant and train it with mature size, moving plans, and spaces in mind.
Space, Spread, and Glasshouse Compromises
As detailed above, growing dragon fruit in your glasshouse will require careful consideration on space, position, planting, and training. For the smaller glasshouses in most home gardens, a dragon fruit cactus (or several cacti) will require a decent chunk of the available space. They’re also prickly beasts, so you won’t want them to be in the way of your general movement and flow.
Training and pruning can be used to limit the mature size and spread. Our cacti are planted in a row at the back end of the glasshouse in shared raised bed with shared support frames. We train and prune them to stay a little shorter and have a smaller spread than a typical mature dragon fruit cactus are a little smaller, since we need to stay under the glasshouse wall height and moderate space. This means lower production with less branch space for flowers and fruit.
Extra Glasshouse Cacti Care
As with all fully sheltered plants, growing dragon fruit in a glasshouse means that you’ll be fully responsible for making sure that they’re fed, watered, and maintained. In addition to the general care, you’ll want to monitor closely for pests and problems.
Glasshouse plants don’t get the natural help of wind and rain, so they might need a little extra housekeeping. Mine get overtaken with spider webs, which makes them even more prone to gathering debris that needs an occasional clean-up.
There’s usually less airflow and often higher humidity in a glasshouse, both of which can raise the risks of fungal diseases. Avoid overhead watering and monitor for signs of trouble.
Dragon fruit like sunshine (although be wary of sunscald in extreme conditions). In addition to planting aspect, you’ll want to make sure the glasshouse is letting the sunshine through, and soaking in its heat during winter. Some panel materials cloud with time, reducing light. For durable panels like glass, you usually just need to give things a wash from time to time.
Although growing dragon fruit in a glasshouse helps protect it from cool winter weather, it might get a little too sizzling inside during the peak of summer. In hot sunny conditions, open your glasshouse before the day heats up and encourage as much airflow as possible. If temperatures are hitting 40C or above, consider putting up temporary shading. Your cactus is unlikely to suffer too badly from the heat, unless you don’t keep it watered, but you might need to shelter exposed branches from extreme heat and sun to avoid sunscald.
For the curious, our glasshouse is just a small but functional glass and aluminium kitset (throwback photo of hubby during glasshouse assembly). In addition to the main sliding doors, it has automatic roof panels and manual side louvers for extra ventilation. The back end (no doors) is where the cacti live, so they’re not too in the way or blocking the main space.
Sourcing or Propagating Dragon Fruit Cacti
Purchasing Plants
Depending on where you live, you may be able to buy young dragon fruit plants at a nursery, but in cooler climates they’re unlikely to be a commonly stocked item. Here, they’re only available for order from specialist suppliers.
Propagating Dragon Fruit from Cuttings
Like many cacti and succulents, dragon fruit are easy to propagate from cuttings. You may have special order these (we did) unless you have a friend with a dragon fruit cactus, in which case they’d probably happily share or swap. We’re routinely pruning off segments from our mature cacti and most just end up being composted since we don’t need more plants.
Start with a healthy stem segment. Let the cut end(s) dry and callous for a few days, and then pot it up in some succulent mix and place in a semi-sheltered position to set roots. Keep the soil moist, but not wet. Before you know it, you’ll have a new little cactus starting to pop out shoots.
Spring or early-summer pruning is a great time to collect cuttings for faster warm-season growth, but healthy cuttings will readily take any time of year.
Propagating Dragon Fruit from Seed
This is also pretty easy, but very very very slow compared to staring from a cutting. If you have an over-ripe dragon fruit, the seeds might even start to sprout inside the fruit before you try to propagate! That’s what led to our first seed-starting test, just for the interest of trying.
Prick out some seeds or a thin portion of pulp onto paper towel, keep it moist and out of direct light, and let nature work its magic. They’ll sprout in a couple of weeks (if not already sprouted), and then you can transplant them into soil for ongoing development.
Growth and Care
Soil
As noted above, dragon fruit like richer soils than desert cacti. They can tolerate poor soils, but the cacti (and flowers/fruit) will grow better in a free-draining enriched soil mixture. If you’re considering planting your dragon fruit cactus into a ready-made mix, pick a rich succulent mix and/or add some extra compost to customise your blend before planting. On the flip side, you can use additives to improve soil drainage, if needed.
For cooler climates or wet soils, planting in large pots or raised beds will help with better drainage and reduce the chance of sitting in soggy soils. Our dragon fruit are planted side-by-side in EverGrow root bags inside a large raised wooden bed at the end of the glasshouse.
Feeding
If planting conditions allow, the soil can be top-dressed periodically if/as needed, and fed with a balanced fertiliser. Spring feeding should be aimed towards flowering and fruiting.
We give our cacti an early spring top-dress and feeding, plus occasional boosts of light liquid fertiliser or seaweed solutions through the main growing/fruiting period. Because they’re root restricted with the EverGrow bags and planted in a confined raised bed, maintaining and replenishing nutrients is extra important. For main feeds, I like to use a fertliser that’s balanced towards flowering and fruiting and/or add a little extra potash for potassium.
Watering
As noted above, dragon fruit should be kept evenly watered through their main growth periods. Be careful not to overwater, especially for any in-ground plants that might not be fully free-draining. Overwatering can lead to plant health issues and/or fruiting issues, like splitting.
During the winter, when things slow down and cool down, ease off on the watering. Overwatering or soggy soils can lead to root rot, stem rot, or other health issues.
Supporting and Shaping
Plant your dragon fruit with a support pillar and/or frame. Don’t be like me and wait, thinking that the dragon fruit will be a slow grower…. As a lesson learned, we didn’t plant our EverGrow bags straight away. The raised bed was built a season later, after our gangly messy cacti had already outgrown their hoops. Extracting them (we had to cut the hoops apart), planting, and then attempting to frame and train meant that we lost an opportunity for early training, more shapely plants, and perhaps earlier fruiting. We have to prune some segments off, some were damaged during handling, and we got more than a few prickles and scratches in the process.
Start with a stake or pillar next to the main stem of the cacti, high enough to reach your surrounding support frame (or strong enough to hold an attached top frame). Tie your main stem (and any additional branches you keep as uprights) to this support until you reach the desired height for side branching and supporting. Remove unwanted side growth if/as needed.
At height, pinch or prune the top to encourage top branching at the crown. Train these branches over your support frame(s). Encourage drooping and dangling, if possible.
Pruning
Prune unwanted shoots and side growth below the branching crown(s) and the tops at crown point(s), as noted above, during establishment and ongoing training.
Once mature, unless necessary, avoid pruning during the fruiting and flowering stages to keep your cacti stress low and its energy focused into production. Instead, plan a post-harvest clean-up and a late-winter pruning and training review to set things up before the new growth period. Exceptions for health and for thinning excess flower buds, if as needed, of course.
On an ongoing basis, inspect your cacti and remove any unhealthy, damaged, or unwanted growth to keep your structure and avoid over-congestion. They’re vigorous growers, so don’t be dainty about they care. You want your cacti’s energy going into good, healthy, productive stems.
You can also remove some old growth stems during your seasonal pruning to make room for a continual cycle of new fruiting branches within your available space. The plant flowers best on newer growth, so having a continual turnover of stems will give you a better chance of setting flowers and growing fruit. Depending on the shape and structure of your cactus, you may also want to limit branch extension/length and/or trip branch tips to encourage setting buds.
Disease, Pests, and Problems
In humid conditions, like their natural habitats and many glasshouses, depending on the season and the weather, keep an eye out for fungal diseases. Avoid overhead watering and encourage good airflow to your plant, including pruning if/as needed to reduce congestion. You might occasionally need to give your plants a good wash and/or they might inherit a wash while you do seasonal cleaning for your glasshouse, in which case try to do this early on a day with good airflow so that the stems can dry off fairly quickly.
The main pest on dragon fruit in our glasshouse seems to be ants and, occasionally, snails. Ants everywhere in the garden are a pain, but they’re usually just a bother at the roots. On when they get on me (ours bite!) while I’m gardening. On the dragon fruit, they’re drawn to the sweet sap that sometimes comes out on young growth and buds, and nip and stunt the the new growth.
Spiders love our glasshouse a little too much for my liking, and the branches of the dragon fruit cacti are favourite web-making territory. This might help with natural pest control, but it also gets rather messy, as you may notice in some of my photos. And gardener beware while working for lurking spiders and sticky webbing in the way of just about everything.
Flowering Dragon Fruit Cacti
Maturity
If you’re starting with a young plant or a cutting, it will take several years for the dragon fruit plant to mature and set its first buds for flowering and fruit production. If you’re starting from seed with will take a long longer for the plant to reach the same level of growth and maturity.
Season
Dragon fruit are typically summer flowering. Depending on your cacti, you may get several flushes of blossoms through the season. Whether these will mature into fruit depends on pollination (see below) and whether conditions stay favourable long enough for development.
In our New Zealand glasshouse, the dragon fruit flower in midsummer (late January or early February), with a second smaller flush a bit later in the summer, and sometimes more. Unfortunately, for extra late flushes, the fruit doesn’t usually reach ripening before cold weather.
Favourable Conditions
Once your cactus is mature enough to set flowers, set will depend on growing conditions. If the cactus is mature, happy, healthy, well-fed, evenly watered, it should flower when temperatures and sunlight conditions are favourable.
Training branches downwards, thinning stems, and/or tipping branches, as noted above, may help to trigger bud development. I’ve found tipping and applying a fruit/flower fertiliser (and/or adding some extra potash for potassium) both seem to give our cacti a boost.
Thinning Buds
If there is a heavy load of buds on a branch, the cacti may choose to self-abort excess buds rather than putting energy into all of them. You’ll see these slow relative to their peers and start to yellow. You easily can nip them off by hand rather than let the plant slowly do it naturally.
You should also check for bud that are too closely spaced to allow fruit development, awkwardly placed for the flower to open properly, or otherwise problematic. These are prime candidates for you to manually thin off, especially if you have an overloaded plant or stem.
Flower Bud Development
The flower buds on the dragon fruit take three to four weeks to mature to blooming. Huge flowers come with huge buds. The heathy developing bud pictured below is still just a baby. You can see a ready-to-open bud in the pollination collage below. In the last few days before opening, growth is rapid. On the day before their bloom, the buds begin to crack and the petals will begin to peek through. At dusk, the bud puffs, and you’ll know the night bloom is coming.
Sensational Blooms, For One Night Only….
Dragon fruit flowers are spectacular, making them worth growing, space and patience permitting, even if you’re not trying to grow fruit. Each huge flower opens for one night only, spreading after dusk and quickly drooping away after sunrise. Dragon fruit flowers are really large and truly something spectacular. Our flowers are dinner plate sized at around 20-30cm across when fully open. They have a strong smell that reminds me of lilies.
In their natural habitat, these big night blooms would be pollinated by bats, moths, and other night creatures. But, at home (especially in the shelter of a glasshouse), you’ll want to watch your cacti carefully at blossoming time for late-night or early-morning hand pollination. Don’t worry. It’s surprisingly simple (see below). And even if you don’t want fruit, it’s still worth taking a look at your cactus during its night blooming phase just to see and smell the flowers.
Pollinating Dragon Fruit Flowers
Compatibility and Pollination Options
Some dragon fruit are self-pollinating, self-fertile, or self-compatible, others aren’t. And, unless you’re buying a known plant, it can be hard to know exactly what you’re starting from with cuttings or seeds. As noted above, since these are night flowering plants and you’re unlikely to have suitable night-pollinating critters, especially in your glasshouse, you’ll need to help out. Unless you’re certain it isn’t needed, hand-pollinating is recommended for all flowers. With cross-pollination between flowers, cacti, and/or varieties, depending on what you’re growing.
If you plant a dragon fruit variety that you know to be self-sterile, then you’ll need a suitable cross-pollinator if you hope to grow fruit. Ask your supplier or search for recommendations.
Monitoring for Bloom Time
You’ll be able to see when your dragon fruit is within a night or two of opening by the change in the flower buds. The day they’re preparing to bloom, you’ll see the big upright buds begin to crack open a little, and the closed petals peeking through. Prepare for pollination duties!
Some say that dragon fruit flowers bloom in full moons, but mine have always opened incrementally over several nights. I’ve not taken any notice of whether these are close to full moons, but I’ll keep an eye on the sky when the next season rolls around. Bud puff and crack is my signal for pollinating, and I try to check the glasshouse at dusk and dawn during flushes.
The best time for pollination will be in the evening at or just after dusk, ideally a few hours after the flower opens. The pollen will be released and active, and the stigma will still be fresh, sturdy, and ready for pollination. If you miss a night flower or one is slow to open before you head to bed, you can still pollinate in the early morning. If possible, check in on your cactus before the sun rises and the heat of the days sets in. As long as the stigma is still upright and firm, you still have a chance at successful pollination. Give it a shot, there is nothing to lose in trying.
Playing the Role of Night Moth
Flower(s) opened? It’s show time for your starring role as night moth in the pollination play. An initial joke about Humphrey and I playing the role of night moth when we headed out to hand-pollinate our first ever flowers somehow became our family’s term for hand-pollinating. Haha!
The first time we pollinated, I painstakingly paint-brushed pollen to and from the flowers. Then I realised that there was no added-value in being overly delicate with the method. It’s much easier just to use scissors to snip (or carefully hand pinch) the ends of some stamens from the donor flower and deposit them onto the stigma of the recipient flower. A little shake of the style for good measure to help make sure some pollen flows down, and job done. Snip and deposit from multiple donors to boost your chance, if you like. Our pollination success rate has been 100% every year so far, not to brag, but we’re feeling pretty chuffed about our night moth skills.
By exception, when it looks like a flower might be left blooming solo, I’ll snip some pollen from a flower into a clean empty pill bottle or jar to save briefly in case needed for cross-pollinating.
Signs of Successful Pollination
The blossom will start to droop and wilt at dawn irrespective of whether or not the flower has been pollinated. But, within a couple of days, you’ll start to see signs. If there’s been a successful pollination, the spent flower will begin to yellow off, but the base and septals by the cactus stem won’t. This this the young fruitlet portion of the bud. It will stay firm and green (at this unripe stage), eventually maturing and forming part of your dragon fruit.
The yellowing line is really distinct and, at this stage, you’ll probably be getting excited. Pat yourself on the back, night moth. Pollination duties well done! Onwards to fruit development.
Removing Spent Blossoms (Optional)
The first time our cacti set fruit, I just let nature take its course and left the spent flowers. The fruit didn’t suffer, but the flowers dried up and then just stayed on the fruit in a brown messy tassel. Prime spider nesting territory. But also a potential host for rot, mould, disease, or pests.
I started cutting them off after they became dry. More tidy, but not a complete clean-up. The dry brown base of the flower was still there, tucked up inside the fruit. Impatiently, one day without my secateurs, I tried braking a flower off by hand. And then promptly had a little panic when the whole thing came away, inset base and all, leaving just the end of the pistil style.
Uhh ohh. Had I wrecked my fruit? Panic Googling brought me to this awesome video on how to remove the spent flowers from dragon fruit (and an excellent channel in general for more dragon fruit growing advice). Turns out I’d not wrecked the dragon fruit at all, and had accidently discovered how to remove the flowers really well. Haha! Impatience for the surprise win.
Once yellowed off to the point where the spent flower rocks freely when wiggled, loosen it up, and then carefully pull it free for a nice clean end to your developing dragon fruit. How perfect is that? The style connects with the ovary, so its safest to leave the style of the pistil behind at this stage to avoid accidently disturbing the fruit. It will dry up cleanly and you can snip it off later.
Fruit Development and Harvest
Season
As noted above, dragon fruit are summer flowering and fruiting, although fruit may develop and ripen into the autumn. Depending on your cacti, you may get several flushes of blossoms through the season and that will lead to a stagger of development and harvest for your fruit.
Unfortunately, for cooler climate growers like us, you later flushes might not fully develop and ripen before your days shorten and cool to a point where they stop progressing. Dragon fruit won’t ripen to full flavour or sweetness off the stem either, so you might have to sadly cut your losses on any late-season stalls. You can try, taste-test, and decide for yourself if they’re close.
Developing Fruit
In ideal conditions, dragon fruit will be ready to harvest around a month after pollination. The base of the flowers will slowly fatten and morph into large oval-ish green fruit, then the skins will ripen into colour, depending on the variety. Ours are a deep reddish-pink skin with white pulp.
In less-than-ideal conditions, it might take a while longer. Or, unfortunately, you might have some fruit not make it all the way to ripe and ready before it gets too cool and dark for development, as noted above. But, with any luck, you’ll get at least a first flush and perhaps more for harvest.
Harvest
Dragon fruit aren’t ready to pick until fully ripe. As noted above, they don’t continue to ripen into full flavour and sweeteness potential after they’re picked, so patience is important. I know. It’s difficult. But it’s worth the wait not to waste your precious dragonfruit or lose out on taste.
Not sure if your dragon fruit are ripe and ready? Colour and a gentle squeeze to check for softening give are good indicators, but I like the wiggle test for a sure thing. When a dragon fruit is ready to be picked, it will loosen on the branch and rock gently if you try to wiggle it side-to-side and up-and-down. Then you know it’s ready to harvest and eat.
Enjoying Your Home Grown Dragon Fruit
Dragon fruit are best enjoyed fresh or within a day or two of picking, so lucky you if you’re able to pop out into the garden or glasshouse a pick one yourself. Because the cactus flowers in flushes, the fruit tend to mature in flshes, which might mean you have too many ready at once.
They’ll keep on the counter for a couple of days or in the fridge for a week or two. You can scoop the pulp and freeze it, but like many fruits, the texture won’t be the same when thawed. It’s a great option if you enjoy dragon fruit in smoothies or smoothie bowls, though.
And, of course, you can wow your family, friends, neighbours, or coworkers by sharing some of your amazing unique home grown dragon fruit harvest.
