This is Barneys experience growing dragon fruit in Far North Queensland. Thankyou for sharing and looking forward to follow your journey growing dragon fruit.

I live in Innisfail Tropical North Qld. We have an average of 3 metres of rain a year. We have red volcanic soil - which sounds good but given the rainfall amount the minerals can become depleted wry quickly.

My Family of 3 kids and one wife have been livening on this property for 12 years- we took over in 2012 after the cyclone Yasi has smashed it. What remained was some remnants of a tropical fruit farm - growing jackfruit , pawpaw, rambutan, rollinia, soursop.

We had been to Vietnam on our honeymoon- and have always been interested in Dragon fruit, seeing how the Vietnamese farm was another level. 

My first tasting were not overwhelming , it was just a common white variety. But I love fruit and wanted to grow some anyway.

I had always considered our place to be too wet for the tropical cactus. After some experimental plantings on our farm I finally bit the bullet and put in 200 concrete fence post to up the scale a bit. That was in the year 2020.

I was trying to find varieties to grow and was amazed at how many different varieties were out there. Watching YouTube growers like Richard Lee and Kim Pham really got me hooked on these awesome fruits.

I decided to plant Isis/Aussie Gold as my main crop, and as pollinators I have planted 3 varieties of white and Columbian red. I have added some other varieties to see how they go which include- CFA dessert king, CFA purple supreme, CFA purple dawn, Tricia, orange giant, Lisa, Dark star,  KVA, delight, condor, rixford, physical graffiti.

My biggest problems I face is the extreme elements- from scorching summing sun to the flooding rain.

So far they have seemed to cope better than I expected- I try to provide magnesium in the soil just to help protect them from the heat and have mounded them to help from wet feet.

I mulch a fair bit- to help retain the minerals from getting washed out.

My biggest tip is Dragon fruits are like your children, the more you spend time with them the more you will get to know their needs, leave them alone and they will get out of control.

My top dragon fruit varieties would have to be condor, purple supreme, palora.