Cactus gardens

Anyone else on here into cactus? Just got mine started last year and it’s still got a long way to go tell done... just scored on a Joshua tree a few days ago! Mostly All different types of opuntia, a few different Utah agaves, a Joshua tree and a soap tree yucca

We have a few prickly starting to come around

Keep the prickly pear tamed or it will spread and get out of hand, which happened to my wife's dad. The fruit is really good and healthy.

https://honest-food.net/how-to-clean-nopales/

I've never been a fan of them and have had them lots of ways cooked by various ethnicities. I would eat them if I had to. The fruit on the other hand is sweet but getting the fine "hairs" off is a pain

Cactus plants do look neat.

In the link above, I read down to where it says: Cleaned and wiped down they will last for a week in the fridge.

Let me ask, what in the world would you do with them, once they are cleaned up?

Typically sliced and cooked with other vegetables like zucchini and squash. There's a lot of ways to cook them

I'd never heard of anyone eating them.

I know you can eat any of the opuntia but I doubt any of mine are good ones for that... lol

Various but not all yucca "leaves" can be used as needle and thread or stitches in the wild.
Prickly pears ripen late summer early fall.

Red snow, if you get a chance eat or drink some prickly pears. You can juice the fruit. I've seen the juice turned into jams and sorbet mixed alcohol drinks etc... the fruit is incredibly healthy

Hmmm, if I'm not mistaken the prickly pears that grow around here have a yellow flower, I don't recall ever seeing a fruit. They are really not that common here, I know of a few spots where there are a good many, but they don't seem to spread much.

I'll check around, but I've just never heard of anyone ever trying to eat them. One of those things, wrap it in bacon it'd probably be edible. lol

Yup the flowers very in color (white red yellow pink etc...) that's wild you guys have some there.
I wouldn't wrap it in bacon without getting the "fine hairs" off the fruit first.

Yep there is an eastern prickly pear. They grow in a few places here but are not common. They can even take the cold well - we had them in our flower beds in northern IN when I grew up. In the winter they would shrivel up to nothing and look dead, but when the warm spring rains came they would bounce back and look just like they did the summer before. My God-mother had some that would produce fruit every year, but they were some she brought back from Italy.