FREE CACTI TOO! - EDIBLE LANDSCAPING

I sure do love generous people!

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I had actually been admiring these plants for years now, and once I commented on them, the owners told me I was free to take some home with me to grow on our homestead!

BIG, BEAUTIFUL, EDIBLE CACTI

When my mom and @grandpa-pepper came for their last visit, they stayed at the same place that @vcelier did when he visited us last year. The photo above is of the room that my folks stayed in.

On each side of the door is a large pad type cacti, which people sometimes call a prickly pear. There are many pad types of cacti around the world, and as far as I know, they are all edible.

Here is a video of me eating some down in Texas last year. Both the pads and the fruit are edible, and we really enjoy eating them both. If you've haven't tried them, you should find someone who eats them near you and see if they can share some knowledge and food.

This is the one growing on the other side of the door. As you can tell, it is a large healthy plant with a lot of new growth. It is already starting to grow new pads and flowers, so there should be some good fruit later on this year.

At the room next to theirs was this type of cactus, which it not a pad-type cacti, so I'll treat it as an ornamental. They said that this one gets beautiful purple flowers, so we took a few pieces of them too.

On mature plants, some of the pads may fall off or be bumped off. This is one way to propagate these wonderful plants, and this is what I was looking for. Rather than tearing off the pads that were still connected to the cactus, I thought it would be best to collect a few fallen pads to plant back at home.

FISHING FOR CACTUS PADS

On my fallen pad collection journey, I noticed this one deep in the center of the mature cactus. I knew that it could be obtained, but I'd have to figure out how, since my arm would not reach and the cactus is covered in tiny spines.

I had some fishing poles with me, so I figured I'd give that a try. I tied a hook to the last eyelet on the rod and decided to go for it. The long pole could reach where I could not and the hook would hopefully be strong enough and large enough to hook the pad.

Thankfully, I was able to get the hook into the cactus pad, but now came the hard part; lifting it out without bumping it off.

Much like those "claw machines" full of stuffed animals, the excitement as the pad neared the top was high. This is normally when the pink teddy bear slips through the smooth metal claws of the machine when it jerks unexpectedly, so I had to be extra careful.

Looks like all those quarters I've spent over the years finally paid off! I actually won this time! LOL.

Anyway, hopefully we will eventually have some nice big, beautiful, edible cacti growing on our land. Because of the generosity of the resort owners, we've now got some great pads to try with! I'll let you know how it turns out.

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-cacti

Until next time…

GIF provided by @anzirpasai

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