How to Grow Dragon Fruit Trees Indoors

There’s nothing like cutting a ripe piece of fruit off of a living dragon fruit (Selenicereus spp.). Inside the colorful fruit resembling a dragon egg is a soft, juicy interior with sweet flesh and sometimes beetroot-like red and purple pigments. 

As alien as this cactus looks, it’s one of the most commonly grown fruits in the world’s subtropical and tropical regions. Native to Mexico and Central America, this cactus, also known as pitahaya, thrives in USDA Hardiness Zones 10-11. If you live outside of that warm zone, you’ll have to grow your dragon fruit indoors. 

Fortunately, by following a few steps, you’ll be able to grow a healthy and productive dragon fruit cactus successfully. Keep reading below to learn more about how to grow dragon fruit trees indoors. 

Choose the Right Variety

The first step in successfully growing dragon fruit is choosing the right variety. Many diverse varieties exist, but only a handful can thrive indoors. 

There are three types of dragon fruit: self-fertile, self-sterile, and self-pollinating. The latter needs less human intervention to pollinate, while the others need at least some help from you. Self-sterile varieties need pollen from other compatible pitahaya varieties to produce fruit. These are less common and better suited for expert gardeners.  

Some species can thrive in pots and indoor spaces as long as you satisfy their growing conditions. Some have bright yellow skin, while others have leathery red skin with red or white flesh. Below are the common types you’ll be planting.

Selenicereus costaricensis

This is a common red-skinned variety that you see in markets across Asia. Its fruit has juicy red or pink flesh that’s super sweet.

Selenicereus undatus

This is the most common species you’ll see in markets and grocery stores in the US. Its fruits have sweet white flesh and red to pink skin. 

Selenicereus megalanthus

Also known as yellow dragon fruit, this species is popular in Peru and other parts of South America. Its yellow skin protects sweet, white flesh that’s so delicious it’s addictive. 

Select a Healthy Cutting

Just like outdoor plants, it’s easiest to grow your pitahaya from cuttings rather than seeds. Cuttings are dependable and easy to work with. If you know the source of the cutting, you’ll know exactly how the plant behaves and how delicious its fruit is. 

You can find cuttings from local gardeners and nurseries. Or you can find a plant you like and take the cutting yourself. Once you have your cutting, it will root just like other cacti and grow into a clone of its parent. Once it takes root in the soil, you’ll have a mature tree in no time. 

This warm-weather cactus grows quickly. Within a year or two, you’ll have ripe, juicy fruit if the plant is healthy and pollination is successful. Choose the cutting based on what type of fruit you want. The best plants for indoor gardens include ‘Yellow Dragon Fruit’, ‘Edgar’s Baby’, and ‘Alice’ varieties.

Get Your Cutting Ready

If you’re taking a cutting from an outdoor plant yourself, you’ll want to start with disinfected pruning shears. Find a mature stem that’s thick, juicy, and bright green. It should be around eight inches long. 

Look for a woody nub connecting it to the rest of the plant. With your clean shears, cut the nub at its base. The woody end will be ready to root once you put it soil. 

Take a few cuttings to have a variety to choose from. You can try growing several cuttings in the same pot. Or, give them away for your friends or family to try in their indoor gardens. 

Choose the Right Container 

When you have your healthy cutting, it’s time to choose the right container. Look for a wide 20-35 gallon pot with good drainage holes. It should be over 12 inches deep and wider than it is tall. 

The plant grows fast, so start with a big container. Take your time to choose your container so you won’t have to worry about replacing it as your plant grows. 

Move Your Container to the Brightest Window

Once you picked your container, move it to a bright location. After you build your trellis and fill it with soil, it will be hard to move. The ideal space will have south-facing windows if you live in the northern hemisphere. This will let enough sunlight into the room. 

Once it’s mature, your plant needs six to eight hours of direct sun to fruit. If there’s too much shade outside, your pitahaya will have trouble growing. 

If you don’t have large windows, you can try using grow lights or growing your plant in a greenhouse. As long as there’s enough direct sunlight, it will produce an abundance of fruit, even in an indoor container!

Build a Trellis

Trellising is an important step because your plant will use the same trellis for up to a decade! Even though you’re growing your pitahaya indoors, it will need a good-sized trellis for the vine-like branches to climb. 

Pitahayas grow vertically during their first year of growth. After the first year, they start to vine horizontally and fall like a prickly weeping willow. Having a sturdy trellis that supports its natural growth is key to getting a healthy plant. 

If you have the tools you need, you can build a trellis at home. Trellises like this one are easy to build at home and work magically. Use untreated hardwood such as cedar. Treated wood contains chemicals that can be harmful to you and your pitahaya. 

Add Your Soil

Although this plant comes from the family Cactaceae, it doesn’t grow in the same type of soil other cacti thrive in. It prefers soil that’s nutrient-rich and somewhat moist. 

To get the right balance, use well-draining soil that’s packed with nutrients. Try blending one-third cactus mix with two-thirds vegetable potting mix. You can add sand or perlite to improve drainage. Your tropical cacti won’t thrive in soggy soil, so it should be porous. 

Pack bark or stones at the bottom of the pot, then add the soil. You can add compost at this stage to get extra nutrients in the soil. 

Plant Your Cutting 

Once your trellis is secure and your pot is full of rich, well-draining soil, it’s time to plant your cutting. Plant it a half inch to one inch deep around your trellis and bury its base in the soil. Avoid planting your cutting more than an inch or two deep to prevent the stem’s flesh from rotting.

Stick a small wood or bamboo stake deep into the soil to secure it in place. It doesn’t have to be big because the cutting is still very lightweight. The stake will keep it upright as its roots develop and it grows large enough to secure to the trellis. 

Once your cutting is in the soil, secure it to the wood or bamboo stake by wrapping it with gardener’s tape. Roots will develop over a few days and your cutting will produce new stems. 

Keep it Out of Direct Sun 

At this stage, it’s important to keep it away from the direct sun. If you let the direct sun beat down on your cutting, it will dehydrate and die from sunscalding. 

Your cutting is delicate at this stage and needs plenty of shade until it matures. Put up a shade blanket or window covering if you’re growing your plant indoors. You can also wrap a blanket or piece of cardboard around the base of your trellis. Opt for bright yet indirect or filtered light.

Once you see an inch or more of new growth form on your cutting, it’s ready for the sun. Remove the covering and expose your plant to the light. 

Give it Water

After you plant your cutting, it’s time to water it. Just give it a quick watering until the top layer of soil is moist. The roots are short, so there’s no reason to completely soak the soil. 

A pitahaya can easily become waterlogged, especially when it’s just a cutting. Avoid overwatering your plant and wait until the soil dries until you rewater it. If the soil gets soggy, your cutting can become waterlogged and die. 

Once your plant starts to climb, continue to soak and dry the soil. Once the top one or two inches of soil dries, give it another soaking, and so on. Watering in the morning is ideal, especially if it’s getting enough sun. 

Grow Multiple Cuttings Together

Your container is big enough to grow a few pitahaya cuttings together. Many gardeners avoid planting over three or four cuttings at a time in the same pot. 

The reason for this strategy for this is to get bushier growth and more fruit on one trellis. This is a great strategy for an indoor garden with limited space. 

Try growing multiple varieties together or stick to one variety. There’s nothing prettier than multi-colored pitahaya growing on a single trellis. Your indoor space will never look the same! 

Feed Your Plant Regularly

In the early stages of your pitahaya’s growth, it needs plenty of nitrogen. This important element gives your plant the energy it needs to produce new growth. Without fertilizer, your pitahaya will grow slowly in its container and eventually deplete its nutrients. 

Use a slow-release or liquid organic fertilizer rich in nitrogen. All-purpose fertilizers or commercial fish emulsions are ideal. Look for a higher first number on a three-number nutrient label. 

Whatever you do, avoid synthetic fertilizers. These can leave chemical burns on your delicate cuttings and over-feed them. Chemical fertilizers build up over time in the soil, something you don’t want in an indoor container growing food. 

Train Your Plant

As your pitahaya climbs the trellis, train it with gardening tape. Secure each stem close to the post. A mature tree has a lot of sharp spines, so wear protective gloves like these when you’re handling its stems. 

After a few months, your plant will grow to the top of your trellis. If you leave it be, it will keep growing vertically until it becomes top-heavy and spills over. 

To prevent this, cut the plant’s vertical growing tips at the top. It will grow horizontally from its lateral meristems along the top of the trellis. Keep securing the new stems to form a beautiful T-shape at the top.

Prune Regularly

As your plant grows, you’ll want to prune away any excessive growth and side shoots. Look for stems that form horizontally from the main stem, below the trellis’ canopy. Cut the stems at their woody nobs connecting them to the main trunk. You don’t want to leave any side shoots until it reaches the canopy. 

Prune away stems that look diseased or too stubby. Remove any stem that’s less than six inches long because it’s probably not going to be very productive. At the bottom of your plant, cut away stems that are growing poorly. 

Leave two or three of the longest stems and prune away shorter stems. Keep doing this throughout your pitahaya’s life cycle and you’ll have a productive indoor tree. 

Prepare Your Tree to Fruit

After one or two years, your tree is ready to produce flowers and fruit. This exciting stage is when you get the most vigorous growth. The more intense the growth, the more fruit you’ll harvest!

Now, it’s time to do a little manipulating. Although you can let it flower and fruit naturally, it’s easy to force flowering. Do this by trimming two or three inches off the ends of the stems in late summer. As always, use sanitized pruners or sheers to avoid infecting your plant. 

Your pitahaya will stop forming new growth and move energy towards producing flower buds instead. This is an exciting time as a gardener because you have some control over how much fruit your plant produces. 

Pollinate Your Flowers

One of the many cool things about pitahaya is that it produces new vegetation or flowers from its thorns! Once you see the thorn puff up, it’s a sign it’s about to flower. In about a month or a few days longer, you’ll have a magnificent bloom. 

Although beautiful, the flowers will only stay on your plant for about 12 hours. That’s why you need to track your bud from formation to flowering to time it right. Mark the date or number on your stems and wait a month. Act fast once your flower is in bloom. 

Starting in the afternoon, the petals open. In a couple of hours, the white petals will fully open. Grab some photos of these striking flowers. If you have a self-pollinating variety, you can sit back and enjoy the blooms. If you have a self-fertile variety, follow the steps below. 

• Sterilize a new paintbrush with isopropyl alcohol and water and let it dry. Make sure it’s not used.
• The flower should be fully open at night and ready to pollinate. 
• Rub the anthers with your brush to get the pollen.
• Touch the brush to the stigma.
• Move the pollen around the flower gently. 
• You can try cross-pollinating your plant with another one if they’re blooming at the same time. You may get something exciting! 

Harvest Your Fruit

Now it’s time for the fun part! The flower closes after about 12 hours and slowly dies. Don’t worry, this is its natural life cycle, even if you pollinated it correctly. 

Towards the base of the dead flower, you should see a small bulb. If pollination goes successfully, this should turn into a juicy dragon fruit in a month or two. 

Watching these otherworldly fruits develop on dinosaur-like stems is one of the most exciting things for a fruit gardener. Depending on the variety and plant health, you may get tons of fruit! Once the fruit is brightly colored and a little squishy to the touch, it should be ripe.