Tropical Fruit Growers South Florida; we’re an association of farmers that specialize in growing tropical fruits. If you want to buy these tropical fruits you can go to our website tropicalfruitgrowers.com and get it there and it will be delivered to your house or you can go to a supermarket and talk to your products manager.
I have a Dragon Fruit plant in here in The Redlands, an agricultural area 20 miles southwest to Miami, Florida.
Dragon Fruit is also known as Pitaya, they are from the hot arid regions of Central America. Pitaya or Dragon Fruit can grow in all the tropical or subtropical areas throughout the world and here in South Florida.
Dragon Fruit is a fruit that grows on this vine-like cactus that’s held up by this trellis. It flowers at night and the flower gives off this nice sweet aromatic smell; it’s pollinated at night by bats, moths and other insects and by bees in the morning. Once it’s pollinated it closes up in the morning and it takes about 5 to 7 weeks before it can turn into a fruit. The farmer knows when to pick it because it turns into this crimson red color, and it’s picked ripe off the tree, or off the vine.
Dragon Fruit is picked and sent to a supermarket or it could be sent straight to your home. As beautiful as this Dragon Fruits are, I think you’re going you be amazed once we see what’s inside of them. So let’s go to the kitchen.
Now we’re in the kitchen and we’ve got our Dragon Fruit with us. When you receive it from one of our growers they come ripe and ready to eat, nice and red.
I know you want to know what it looks like inside, so let’s cut it open. You just cut it down the middle all the way around and just open it up. As you can see it’s a white flesh with a lot of black seeds, you can just grab a spoon and scoop out some flesh like so and just put it in your mouth like this. Wow it’s very sweet and the seeds feel like sugar crystals when you bite into it. That was very good. Another way I like to slice them is kind of like a watermelon or an avocado. Slice it like this and you can very easily peel the skin back like so and do like this. I love it.
There’s not only white flesh Dragon Fruits, they also have red flesh. Cut it open the same way straight down the middle and when you open it up, surprise, what a difference, it is like blood red. You can grab a spoon and scoop it out like an ice-cream ball. The sugar content in this one is a little bit milder but it tastes very good, like all Dragon Fruits. There’s yellow skin Dragon Fruits also, which are very sweet as well. You can also slice this like an avocado and peel the skin back, look at that color, almost looks like a watermelon.
A lot of people say Dragon Fruit tastes better chilled, so you can put it in a plastic bag like a Ziploc and throw it in the refrigerator and it should last you about 3 to 4 weeks or you can put it in the freezer and it can last you about a good year.
Dragon Fruit tastes good fresh but you can make good ice-cream, they make great smoothies, kids love them in yogurts, they’re good with mixed drinks and they’re good for adding flavors to drinks also.
If you want to learn more about Dragon Fruit you can go to our website wwwtropicalfruitgrowers.com and look up one of our growers and also look for some neat recipes on Dragon Fruit.
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