Jonna...well thanks...I'll tell you I'm real tempted to move way south.. Go foreign..perhaps... Seeing what you can do there is inspiring
So tempted let me tell you.. And with winter coming on here sooner than I'd like...colder than I want..and lasting too long.. Yes each aspect is another vote for the southward move...
Yes.. There are fewer bugs up on the roof...mosquitoes would rather be down where it's damper and cooler without as much wind... And others can't walk over from next door...but they do fly in... And come with every plant I buy it seems..
Oh.. I'd wear myself Out..building a open glass house with water features running through it.. And plants built in everywhere... with a low humidity closet.. I
I'd need a small staff....my own bulldozer / crane .... I think I'll start by making myself a machete..

Oh.. I'd wear myself Out..building a open glass house with water features running through it.. And plants built in everywhere... with a low humidity closet.. I
I'd need a small staff....my own bulldozer / crane .... I think I'll start by making myself a machete..

LOL!! I could use that low humidity closet about now, I'm so over the humidity and so ready for the dry, sunny days of winter. It's funny but most people from northern climates talk a lot about letting light into the house, big windows streaming in light. If you live in the tropics you start to appreciate the value of SHADE, thick walls, dim interiors that are cool and fresh. Trust me on this, you don't want a glass house in the tropics, you would be living in an oven.

You definitely should have a machete, it is almost a law here that every man has a machete. They even make them small so the young boys can have their own too. It would give a US teacher an attack to see these kids of 8 and 9yo out cutting the grass with an extremely sharp machete.

I visited a Dragon Fruit farm at Bramston Beach, North Queensland last week. The fruit is one of my favourite things. I just love the texture. These ones are red inside. The farmer, Ken, scanned a photo of a flower for me.

(No one mentioned to me that the intense red-colouring will colour the faeces. I fed up big on them on Saturday. When I got home from north Queensland and went to the toilet on Sunday, I thought my life was all over).

Oh Glen, that's too funny!! The dragonfruit here has a white center but they grow the ones that are red inside a little farther south, in Guatemala and I think Belize.

Mine are blooming now so the fruit will be in another few weeks. When they start ripening there will be piles of them for sale on every corner. That's when I really overdo it.

Yes... very funny... well after the horror...
well I'm looking to have mine flower... the one with the white flesh is certainly big enough ... my red fleshed one isn't as big.. but seems real health ... so maybe that one will also... they are adjusting to being outside again.. growing nicely after a period of adjustment...

You can also get that same brief momentarily life shattering feeling by forgetting that you had roasted beets with dinner...ask me how I know....lol..the first second, you're stunned, the next 4 seconds you think you're doomed and by the sixth second, you've remembered and feel as though you've been given another chance.....lol..

Sherry, that is the sequence. I felt I had been given a second chance with life.

Jonna, I would overdo it too - an excellent pleasure of taste and texture. When they turn up in the stores on the island they are about $4.50 though.

MMM might be some price fixing going on... they run about $4.50 here in Brooklyn also.. but when they come in in Fl.. there's dozens of street peddlers in Manhattan's Chinatown with them about $2.50

Hi, folks! There are Dragon Fruit vines all over St. Croix, my little island, but they must be the kind that need cross pollination because fruit is rare. I have a huge tangle of vines that grew up a Christmas palm, then across to an orange tree, which died, and the whole mess fell over into a heap a couple of months ago. Cut up, the vines would fill two pick up trucks. There was one little fruit once, white inside, with nice crunchy seeds, but zero flavor. Someone told me to squeeze lemon on it and add sugar. No thanks.

Gordon, not price fix, just expensive shipping?

I have seedlings someone gave me, supposed to be one pink fleshed, and one purple fleshed.

Oh, and my big vine's flowers are not fragrant at all.

This is my white fleshed one. Does real well... I eased it out into the sun this year and it doesn't seem to have sun burned as much as last year...
It did start growing a mass of I guess Airedale roots off a few of the cactus arms.. I was amassed at the amount if them.. But mostly on just a few of the arms.. You can see them as the brown straw looking mass in the picture

I hadn't noticed these in any of the pictures I'd seen of them...
DF seen here with a passion vine and a bit of plumeria on the roof

Some of those roots are probably looking for something to twine into, they normally hang onto crevices in rock and wrap around branches. They will also root sections from the roots. My cats are always breaking off pieces of my dragon fruit and they all root, usually where they fall. On mine, they don't fruit until they have reached the top of whatever they are on and then arch over and down again. I think that is why commercially they grow them on a short post so that they will reach the top quickly and then start fruiting.

I'm so glad I found this thread.,I have 2 varieties of dragon fruit, they are supposed to bloom here in FL within 2 years of planting. Mine looked pretty and fat when it was small, now it has a lot of thin arms reaching all over my garden. Pricked my hubby several times already....it almost ended up in the garbage for last Monday's pick up.

No bud/bloom in sight yet. Hmmm I might give it another year...we do have moths around here.

By the way got a good laugh on some of the posts here.

St. Croix looks wonderful Melissa. I wonder what the secret is to get large and lots of fruit?

I have no idea how the SE Asians get the great fruits! If I did, I'd be stuffed, and sharing!

St. Croix is my home. I've gone places every so often over the last 25 years, but I always come back. The longest I was away was 16 months. It's tropical, and American, no pesky paperwork to live here.

Ah, yet I see you live in Australia, Glen, my #1 favorite place besides here. I visited Oz for six weeks, and loved every minute! I travelled from Sydney all the way north to Mossman, and took a side trip to Mt Isa, what a place that is!!!

@coconut -

"Melissa---
PLEASE don't give me thumbs or acorns!"

may I ask why??

I get a big red button at the top of the page that is nearly impossible to ignore, and it's not a message or anything, just an acorn. It's just more time spent on this computer which is tooooo time consuming.

Ok, understood. I wonder if you can turn the big red button off? @dave?

In Firefox you can right click the red "button" and click on block this image and it'll stop showing up. If you're not using firefox than I don't know how to do it.

Erghhhh, I just had to go see, I got two thumbs. I'm about to quit giving advice!

Old Grouch Melissa, grrrrrrrrrr

Here's a pic of another of my white fleshed pitaya blooming. This is a 1st day bloom, the blooms last 2 days and are bedraggled by the morning of the 3rd. I've had quite a few fruit off these vines this year, more than last year.