We just got done with another late afternoon thunderstorm and took a stroll out back to check on some of the plants and noticed a nice surprise, which I'll get to shortly.
First, just a comment on my TR Hovey Dwarf Papayas. I really have to recommend this variety. They start producing quick and very low on the plant, and they product heavy. I still have two gallons of papaya chunks frozen from my older Hovey and my second/youngest one is about a year old now, only about 5' tall (although, looks taller because it's in a 65 gallon container!), and is just loaded with Papayas:
Among everything else, I also have some Dragonfruits (Pitaya) growing up a 6' post to a trellis. There are two purple, a red, and white growing up each of the four sides of the posts.
I've been a little bummed that, over the last few months, the purple and red pitayas seem to have stalled in growth. They are both much thinner than the white, which has really branched out nicely on the trellis, although, it's been more growing straight up than along the trellis.
In this pic, the white is on the right side of the pic:
As I was taking a stroll around the yard, I walked around the other side of the post for the first time in a few days and was VERY pleasantly surprised to see the white pitaya has its first flower (*wooohoooo!*):
And, a closer look:
I've heard it's best to manually pollenate these since the flower only opens for a few hours in one single night and are normally pollenated by some species of bat, although, others swear that the bees do the business for them.
With only a single flower, I'm not sure how the manual pollination will work, but I'm happy to see it flowering! :)