Cactus with dreadlocks

July/August 2023 California Bountiful magazine 

Water-wise dragon fruit
an up-and-coming crop

Story by Cyndee Fontana-Ott
Photos by David Poller

Kevin Brixey wasn’t blown away by his first taste of dragon fruit.

“It was quite bland and ordinary,” says the Australia native turned Southern California grower who, a few years ago, was searching for a water-efficient crop to spark a passion. Though it wasn’t love at first bite, he went on to sample locally grown red and fuchsia varieties—and a passion was born.

Today he and his wife, Betsy, cultivate dragon fruit or pitahaya (or pitaya), a showy climbing cactus that produces scaly fruit often known for a watermelon-like sweetness and powerhouse health benefits. The couple tends about 1,400 plants and a half-dozen or so different commercial varieties in a part of San Diego County leaning more toward boutique wineries and avocados.

On Dragon Delights farm in Ramona, the Brixeys devote about 2 of 16 acres to dragon fruit. They sell most of the all-organic harvest to Whole Foods in the San Diego area and also host visitors on many weekends during the growing season.

“It brings me a lot of satisfaction to see people learn something new,” says Kevin, his words lightly bathed in an Australian accent. “It was only a few years ago I had no idea what dragon fruit was—in fact, I was skeptical. And here I am now growing it.”

The tip of the trend

The Brixeys aren’t the only ones. Dragon fruit is an emerging crop in California, according to Ramiro Lobo, farm advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension. He estimates Golden State acreage at about 500 with roughly a dozen growers in the San Diego area.

Lobo, a researcher and authority on dragon fruit, has helped cultivate interest in the vining cactus through his shared expertise and evaluation of different varieties. “California dragon fruit is the best you can buy anywhere,” he says.

Dragon fruit—more common in South and Central America, Southeast Asia and Mexico—has been a popular backyard plant for years in Southern California and especially in the Southeast Asian community, he says. Now, commercial growers are increasingly interested because it can adapt to many Southern California micro-climates, command a good price and use less water.

Beneath those exotic scales, the flesh of dragon fruit can be different shades of red, pink, purple, yellow and white, for example, and is peppered with edible black seeds. Most fruit weighs in around the 1-pound mark.

Texture and taste differs according to the variety, with some flavors leaning more sweet, tart or floral, for example. “There’s a dragon fruit for everyone,” Lobo says.

‘Cactus with dreadlocks’

Dragon fruit is grown on a trellis system, with many farmers devising their own unique structure. Generally, the plant is trained and pruned to climb along and hang from a trellis—Kevin tells people it “looks like a cactus with dreadlocks.”

It can take a few years before a cutting grows to yield a good size and number of fruit. A mature plant can produce fruit in around 40 days after pollination and offer multiple flushes in a growing season that can stretch from early summer to late fall.

While some varieties of dragon fruit are self-pollinating, most colorful varieties require hand pollination for good fruit set, Lobo says. “Those are the things that make specialty crop farming a bit of a challenge and unique,” he says.

Marlon Bartelle grows dragon fruit with his brother, Mateo, at Sun Dragon Farms in east San Diego County. He says they’ve been successful with self-pollinating varieties of dragon fruit helped along by the hard work of bees.

In 2022, he says, the farm enjoyed an extended growing season—even pushing into the first few months of this year—and produced close to 2,000 pounds of fruit. That bounty was sold mainly through contacts, online and at a nearby roadside stand.

One of Bartelle’s favorite varieties is the Pride of Fallbrook, which he calls “the steak of dragon fruit.” It has a hearty, meaty texture that tastes like sweet cherries.

With seemingly endless varieties of dragon fruit, farmers can grapple with deciding what to grow. At Dragon Delights, the Brixeys have settled on varieties ranging from Physical Graffiti (sweet with light purple flesh) to Sugar Dragon (very sweet with reddish-purple flesh). They are experimenting with others.

First love, then dragon fruit

The Brixeys ventured into the business after relocating from Australia to the San Diego area in 2000. The couple originally met and fell in love while Kevin was traveling in the United States; Betsy grew up in Southern California.

The couple had three children and lived for about 10 years in Australia, where Kevin’s farming roots included working with sheep and cattle. They returned to Southern California for a visit and were persuaded to stay by her father, who operated a property management business until he retired and sold it in 2015.

The couple bought an abandoned avocado grove in 2000 and began bringing back some trees, cultivating Australian plants and clearing land. When fire swept through the area in 2007, they began looking for a new crop.

“Before we started to grow it, we didn’t know what dragon fruit was,” Betsy says. “We had this land waiting to figure out what we were going to do.”

A conversation with agricultural folks at the San Diego County Fair first planted the seed. The Brixeys went to a University of California field day focused on dragon fruit, where their taste buds awakened to the possibilities.

Now they’ve been growing the fruit for about seven years; their children and family members often help out with social media and other tasks.

A hands-on approach

It can be a demanding crop. The work is done organically and by hand, from pollinating and harvesting to dealing with pests and predators. (It’s Betsy’s job to pick off the snails since she’s a foot shorter than her spouse.)

Hand pollination can be a chore, “but you’re ensuring a good pollination,” Kevin says. “We don’t always know that the bees are doing the full job.”

Using a small handheld vacuum, he collects pollen from the cactus flowers. As they bloom at night, he—and sometimes Betsy and other family members—returns with a headlamp and small brush to dab the stored pollen into each flower.

“It’s a big job because there are some nights when we might have three or four thousand flowers,” Betsy says.

At harvest time, the fruit is carefully picked, washed in a vinegar solution, graded and set upside down in a crate to dry. Within a day or two, Kevin takes the crop to market.

The Brixeys opened up the farm to visitors a few years ago partly because they were throwing away too much fruit—mainly “seconds” with marks or blemishes on the skin. Many visitors thought they didn’t like dragon fruit because they had only tasted an import, Betsy says, but were converted after trying fresh samples.

In addition to tastings, the farm offers occasional tours and even an opportunity to help pollinate the exotic, sweetly scented flowers. It’s a popular visitor experience.

“People come and they think it’s just amazing,” Kevin says. “Sometimes you just don’t realize what a place is to other people.” 

Cyndee Fontana-Ott

Exotic fruit packs a nutritional punch

When dragon fruit season rolls around, chef Jessica Slama jumps at the chance to add to it her menu at Marinade on Main in Ramona.

The farm-to-table restaurant, owned and operated by Slama and her husband, Travis, relies on the bounty of local and seasonal produce. Each summer, she looks forward to having dragon fruit star in a panna cotta, for example, or brighten a special-event salad.

Slama and others call it a fruit with a hidden bonus. “Dragon fruit is really high in antioxidants and has a high fiber content,” Slama says. “There are a lot of health benefits to it—and it’s delicious.”

In fact, many people see the exotic-looking produce as a nutritional powerhouse. “The fruit is excellent and there are many health attributes that it possesses,” says Ramiro Lobo, a farm advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension who conducts research into dragon fruit.

The list of benefits includes vitamin C, protein, iron and other key nutrients, says Betsy Brixey, who grows the cactus with her husband, Kevin, on Dragon Delights farm.

Most often, the fruit is eaten fresh and chilled. Betsy says cooking dragon fruit can diminish its flavor and nutritional value, so she gravitates to cold preparations such as smoothies, ice cream and sorbets, for example.

One recent addition to the farm line-up is Dragon Delights Dehydrated Dragon Fruit, which offers a slightly more concentrated flavor. The dehydrated fruit is sold in 2-ounce packages—about the size of a snack bag of chips—and “has been very popular,” Betsy says.

She began experimenting with dehydrated fruit as a good use for “seconds” and fruit without a market. As a bonus, she says, the new product assures that “I can eat dragon fruit all year long.”