Nopal cactus are a perennial that have pads and spines.
They are edible
They are medicinal
They should be a part of everyone’s garden and food prep.
They have an ornamental quality and have wonderful flowers and fruit. Many cactus varieties are heavy producers!
They don’t need awesome soil or special care so if you want a lazy spot to enjoy make friends with Nopales pads!
They are not expensive.
Follow this garden. Eight years ago I had one gifted pad cutting I put in to dirt and crossed my fingers. Now I have given away at least 10 or more pads and grown 50 or more. I keep one in a pot to remind me where I started. I will prove that people need only to stick pads in the worst soil and over time the soil and pad production will improve. I have grown pads from zone 7 to zone 9 and they have survived drought, freeze, and overwatering from heavy rain. This is a survivor plant and a survivors food source!
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I’m going put the wind to the back of me and hopefully that’ll help it is a real windy day but a lot of people may wonder why I’m fascinated with cactus especially the pus and I like colars for their appearance but um they’re not there for food so I have
Many varieties and I want to share that this this this and this and all of those are non-spiny nepalis Cactus or noal as they are natively called here here barely seen but I promise you here and also over here are my experimental Nepal uh created like they had survived
A landslide see what kind of uh growth they would produce and some of my originals are here and all the babies now every one of these pads started from one pad eight years ago so these are my original Nepal the first first ones I ever grew and then I
Added the purple prickly pear that’s a Texas Variety there it is in all its pristineness and that’s a new pad and there’s my other original and then over here I do not know the variety but I was gifted a cactus it was a house plant but since it’s in Nepal I took it it and grew it outside
As well and these are all new pads that I got from last year and a few of the old original pads still exist and basically what you’re looking at is a very forgiving drought tolerant plant with food security capabilities animal feed capabilities with the non- thorny varieties over here
Fruit produces from all these plants and you can possibly get fruit and fruit juice from them they survive in the drought they survive in higher elevations uh uh they survive in lower elevations I’m only at 80 some feet now uh so you know you can you can do what you
Will with that and the mound that I have created will cause runoff I am repurposing the rim I’ve got a few little shorts on that using a water separation method to get the organic material and all the organic material that gets trapped in the cactus is compostable isn’t that wonderful
So it just keeps giving and I’m going to experiment with a couple other ideas that I’ve had uh possibly this year um and uh I want to uh share this journey especially when they’re going uh all crazy about Gardens carbon Footprints and everything else no special dirt
Needed uh dug from a deep compacted Source mounded covered in gravel to help of water retention and this is going to do fine my original C this is still alive it is in front of my house but these are all the babies and they’re going to produce
Babies and those babies are going to produce babies and hopefully fruit and this is going to feed anybody that has the knowledge to use it and that is why a cactus Mound especially in this day and age is a very good idea even if you
Don’t have an interest in it even if you don’t plan on eating it now you might have the option to eat it later um has the same burn related properties as aloe vera the the juice itself can be used for treating Burns um it can be composted and uh made into feed for
Other plants um lots of uses so just because you’re not into cactuses or any other perennial plants that may feed you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider them so in this episode and all the little shorts related to it Cactus hits the dirt
1 Comment
That’s so awesome that you’ve had those for 8years! I’ve always wondered what cactus fruit tastes like, have you tried it? Thats pretty cool that it can treat burns, I didn’t know that!