Dragonfruit Trellis: Growing dragon fruit in Zone 5
Kevyn has been wanting to grow dragon fruit for quite a while now, and we finally found reasonably priced cuttings at a local nursery!
Most dragonfruit trellises are made out of 4x4s, but because we’ll need to keep our dragon fruit inside over the winter, we wanted a trellis that would be nicer to look at than that.
Material costs are high in general right now, but we were able to find a good price on rebar, and I like the industrial vibe of the rebar with the modern pot we found.
We do a lot of projects with tools and it’s really important to think through safety things for each tool. The biggest concern for me with the welder is eye protection, since Kevyn wears a welding helmet but I don’t. Atlas is never allowed to be in the garage while the welder is running since I can’t control where he looks. Whenever I’m filming I set up the shot and turn away and Kevyn also checks to make sure I’m ready before he starts. Welding is a bit like looking at the sun in that even if your eyes are closed it’s still bright so I always take the extra step of covering my eyes with my hand or arm as well.
Once we had the frame assembled we started working on the inner pieces which is what the dragon fruit will grow up around. We needed to bend each of the 4 inner pieces to the same angle so we marked the beginning and end of the bend on each piece and then used a conduit bender and compared them to confirm the angles.
We then used a piece of scrap tubing to secure the rebar where we wanted it so we could cut it to the proper length and at the correct angle.
Welding has to be done between clean surfaces so each time we welded more rebar together we used a wire wheel to get the mill scale off. In hindsight it would have been WAY easier to do that all up front but at the time it seemed like a lot of work.
We still had to go back and wire wheel the whole thing to prepare it for paint. Really should have just done it up front.
We used a textured spray paint designed to go over rust since rebar rusts really easily. Although I don’t mind the look of the rust, we didn’t want it to interfere with the dragon fruit in any way.
After the paint dried we were finally ready to plant!
We decided on the Ocean Forest dirt from Fox Farm after researching the best dirt for dragon fruit. It’s pricey but for a specialty plant like this we wanted to give it the best start we could.
I’m really happy with how it all turned out and thanks to me being a slow video editor I can also give you the 1 month update.
It’s already growing so well! We’re in Zone 5 so it will need to come inside soon but it’s clearly been loving the heat so far.
Check out the video to see more of the process!
