You guys are not going to believe what came in the mail.
Dragon fruit baby!
My friend Richard over at Grafting Dragon Fruit sent me two packages. In them,
American Beauty dragonfruit stem cuttings, which are amazing.
I'll be potting those up, but that's not today's video.
Today's video is these six different dragon fruit varieties that he sent me.
We have some red varieties and different sizes including this Red LaVerne that's
massive, and then this yellow variety back here.
So in today's video we're going to be doing is taste testing and slicing into
these six varieties to see which tastes the best and what they taste like in
general. So come along. Let's get to it. The first dragon fruit,
I figured we'd start out with the smallest. This is Sugar Dragon.
As you can see, it is quite a small dragon fruit, little baby boy,
and it's supposed to taste like berries.
This next one is probably the coolest named one called Physical Graffiti and it
is a little bit bigger, a little bit more dense, I think,
and it is supposed to taste like kiwi or grapes. Our next one,
still an oblong shape but with more little wings coming off is called delight
and it is supposed to taste like melon. Our next one is called Vietnam white.
It's about the size and weight of a baseball.
I think it's the one that's growing in my front yard and this one is supposed to
taste like a kiwi.
The most unique one as far as the color and the texture is Ecuador Palora it's
this bright yellow and the texture is a bit more rough and scaly.
It is said to be the sweetest of these six supposed to taste like sugar cubes or
honey. Our final one is the biggest one. This is Red Laverne.
It's almost as big as my hand. It's quite heavy.
Another red skinned dragon fruit.
This one's supposed to taste like a grape flavored watermelon,
so I hear so I don't know how refined my palate is, but let's go ahead.
The moment we've all been waiting for.
Let's slice these open and figure out what is inside.
Now we are going to slice into sugar dragon,
a nice sort of neon translucent type of pink color. On this one.
Now we're slicing into physical graffiti. Okay.
Oh my God. Look at the dark flesh on that.
Wow. That's insane. Next, we're doing delight,
which is another white flesh dragon fruit, and you can see,
although the knife colored it a little bit, it's a classic white color.
We're now slicing into Vietnam white
assuming. Oh yeah, it's definitely white in there.
I may have colored it with my knife a little bit, but rest assured,
if we wipe that away, it's full white on the inside. Next,
one of my favorites and the one I'm most excited to taste Ecuador Palora.
This is the yellow dragon fruit. A little bit harder to cut into.
The seeds look very, very large. It has a bright, bright white interior.
Super excited to try this one. Finally, we have our big kahuna Red Laverne,
and as expected, a very,
very stark sort of blood ish purple red on this one,
beautiful color.
So the delight kind of looks like a standard dragon fruit with the white
interior and the beautiful sort of neon pinkish, reddish exterior.
The Ecuador Palora of course, is the most unique one by far.
It's got that larger seed you can see and also a white flash and then that
beautiful yellow skin, Red Laverne, the largest one that you guys saw,
definitely has the most striking interior with this hot pink neon and tons and
tons of seeds and just a lot of flesh relative to the skin.
Then we get over to physical graffiti,
which is drastically the darkest and most blood red.
It's almost hard to even see the seeds in here because it's so stark and so
vibrantly red, so excited about that one.
Sugar dragon has the large seeds of the Ecuador Palora over here,
but of course it's much smaller and it has closer to this red Laverne neon and
then Vietnam white. It's hard to tell because I think I,
my knife did color some of the exterior here, but it is a white flushed variety.
That's more of a classic dragon fruit look.
here we are folks, the moment of truth. Ecuador Palora,
delight, red Laverne, physical graffiti,
Vietnam white and sugar dragon.
Let's go ahead and get to tasting. Alright, here we are.
I'm super excited.
The first one I think I'm going to start with is Vietnam white because that's
the most common.
This is probably the one you see at the grocery store if you're lucky enough to
have one at your grocery store. Now,
Richard at grafting dragon fruit texted me what all these are supposed to taste
like. So I'm gonna see if they match his description.
And then of course we're gonna vote at the end on my favorite,
which one is my actual favorite? So starting with Vietnam white.
And remember before you eat,
dragon prints are really good idea to put them in the fridge and chill them
because if you don't, the flavor just isn't quite there. Okay.
Vietnam white is supposed to taste like a straight up Kiwi.
So let's go ahead and take a chunk out of it. [inaudible]
yup, I get that kiwi vibe. I definitely get the kiwi vibe. It is very mild.
It is that classic dragon fruit where it's not necessarily watered down,
but it is a light sort of tropical, refreshing flavor.
So that was Vietnam white. The next one, we're going to go to a,
I think delight.
And the reason why I'm going to delight is because this is the whitest flesh.
This is the second whitest flesh besides the yellow,
but the yellow is kind of a special ones.
We're saving that one for last delight. It's supposed to taste like a melon.
So kind of similar to that Kiwi. Let's see if it matches.
That is actually way more like a melon.
It has more of that rindy type of flavor to it and it's a little bit less sweet,
but almost more like refreshing and crisp I would say.
And I'm definitely not a taste test expert,
so please take it for what it's worth. Okay.
The next one I think we're going to do is sugar dragon.
That's the smallest one right here.
And that's the one that Richard says tastes like berries.
So kind of a mixing up from the melon and the kiwi.
So let's see if this tastes like berries. [inaudible]
Dude, it totally does. Wow. It tastes like, um Oh.
What is that candy? There's those candies with the uh,
black balls and the red balls around them,
like the raspberry blackberry candies that you buy in those bags and it has that
type of vibe to it, but it's like a lighter flavor. Again,
it's a little bit more mild, but that's actually, we'll go for it.
It totally tastes like that candy,
if anyone remembers that candy commented down below, cause I totally forgot,
but I used to eat those all the time.
Now we're moving into the darker fleshed varieties I think we're going to do is
I'm going to go with red Laverne first.
The red Laverne is supposed to taste like a grape flavored watermelon.
Let's go ahead and check it out. Look at the color on that.
It's crazy looking at it. Ooh,
you're kind of like pops forward. Let me go. Let me go in with another.
That kind of pops forward in your mouth and it does have that grape vibe to it.
It does taste like if you took grape juice and put it into the watermelon rind,
like people will put like vodka or whatever into watermelon tastes like.
If you put some extra grape juice and watermelon and then took a melon baller
and like took scoops of it is kind of what that tastes like. Okay. Finally,
before we get to the final, final is physical graffiti,
the coolest name and also the darkest fleshed variety. It's extremely dark,
kind of like a beet with seeds in it.
This one is supposed to taste like kiwi and grapes
[inaudible] there's more hardy flesh.
It's more like really like you're biting into something substantial. Yeah,
that's a very mild flavor. It is less sweet, I would say, than the sugar dragon,
the red Laverne and the delight and might kind of match the Vietnam white as far
as its level of sweetness straight outta the gate. Now we're onto the final one,
which is actually the one I'm most excited about Ecuador Palora. As you can see,
I've kept all the skin in each of these and so this, as you know,
is the yellow one. This is the one with the largest seeds and it also has very,
very white flesh, so large seeds, white flesh, certainly a unique one.
Richard says Ecuador Palora tastes like sugar cubes or honey so far different
from all the other ones.
And I've heard from my reports as well that this is the sweetest dragon fruit
varieties of yellow variety. So let's go ahead and find out
[inaudible] Oh my God.
I would say that's at least five times sweeter than anything else that's on this
entire table right here. And the seeds aren't as crunchy. They're sort of, they,
they have this, they're crunchy,
but they're like kind of like they have a a chewiness to them as well.
That totally does taste like it's very rich honey,
like a thick natural honey type of flavor. It's not very fruity.
It's way more like straight sugar.
So the Brix content of this must be pretty high.
It must be pretty high in sugar. But guys,
what an amazing opportunity to try all these different dragon fruit.
And if you're one of those who watches to the end of some of my videos,
then you're going to be very lucky because what I'm doing is I have half of each
of these fruits left. Of course I'm going to be eating them.
But I'm going to be saving seeds and I will probably end up listing some of
these seeds on my website. So if you want,
what you'll have to do is you will have to of course subscribe and make sure you
have notifications cause I'll put updates out.
But you may also want to hop on the email list.
And the way to do that is to go to Epicgardening.com and wait for the pop up to
show up and then actually get on the email list.
So while I go ahead and snack on some of this [inaudible], Ecuador Palora,
I have
to say thank you to Richard over at grafting dragon fruit,
a wealth of knowledge, a good guy, a good friend.
I'm going to go visit him pretty soon and hang out with the dragon fruit God
himself. And actually he's going to be getting some cuttings of this one,
which is very hard to find.
So highly recommend you subscribe to his channel as well. And until next time,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
[inaudible] so dang good. Wow.