If you were to have me name the ultimate desert homestead plant it would have to be none other than the prickly pear cactus.
When things are dying in the heat, the garden is roasting to death, we're struggling to keep chickens and goats cool and keep citrus trees watered enough I can't even describe the wonderful feeling I get looking at our cactus garden and seeing all the blushing pink juicy fruits. It's just such a relief to know that if everything baked to death tomorrow, odds are my prickly pear garden would still be here happy as can be in 120 degree weather and still producing fruit.
So before we get into the more fluffy stuff like how darn good the fruits or as they are usually called; tunas(I know weird name! Just roll with it;)) taste, lets learn a little more about these prickly delights!
An Introduction to the Prickly Pear
If you've spent any period of time in the southwest most likely you've seen a prickly pear cactus. They're hard to miss with their big, fleshy, flat, pads and in the spring they usually have striking flowers that can be anywhere from pink to fiery orange and red.
In the early spring, the pads will put out little small dark green buds on the edges of their already established pads, these are the beginnings on oval shaped fruits that will ripen to a pink, purple or yellow in the summer or fall. Not only can you eat the fruit, you can also eat the pads, but they can be fairly cumbersome to prepare and aren't quite as tasty as the fruits. They taste sort of like green beans with the texture of okra. So for the sake of brevity and my lack of experience with the pads, from here on out we'll be focusing on the fruits!
An Introduction to the Prickly Pear
If you've spent any period of time in the southwest most likely you've seen a prickly pear cactus. They're hard to miss with their big, fleshy, flat, pads and in the spring they usually have striking flowers that can be anywhere from pink to fiery orange and red.
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| found on www.delange.org/PricklyPear/PricklyPear.htm |
Amazingly, there are more varieties of prickly pear cactus than you can shake a stick at. There are tall ones, small ones, and anywhere in between with green or purple pads. Some have crazy long thorns some have almost no thorns at all. It's amazing how different some of them can be and how interesting looking. They are native to the America's but they have been introduced to Australia and Africa.
In Arizona and the southwest, there are several different varieties of prickly pears The five varieties we have are the Barbary Fig, the Engelmann, Violet, Rabbit Ear, and the Brittle Prickly Pear. We chose the varieties we have mostly on fruit bearing capacity, although Violet was more chosen for appearances sake. They do bear fruit but Violet Prickly Pear is no match for Engelmann or Rabbit Ear.
Besides the ones we have though there are tons of other interesting prickly pear varieties such as Pancake, Beavertail, Purple, Plains, Mojave, and Santa Rita Prickly Pear.
If you're looking for the highest yielding varieties, the best ones we've seen so far are Engelmann, and Rabbit Ear, we've also heard good things about Brittle but we just planted some this year so no review on them yet.
The Benefits
Prickly pear cactus are amazing, the only con I can think of for growing and harvesting the tunas is that they have thorns. But when compared to all the benefits it is a small price to pay to eat these tasty and nutritious fruits.
Does the Prickly Pear Cactus have any health benefits? Yes indeed! Prickly Pear Cactus are a wonderfully nutritional food high in Vitamin C, fiber and in our experience they are great for raising your metabolism and lowering your blood sugar.
And do you need to be a experienced gardener to grow such marvelous plants? Ha! These guys could literally grow ANYWHERE and do a fabulous job all on their own. All you have to do is cut off a pad from an established plant, stick it in the ground, maybe water it a little to get it established and there you go! Give it a couple years and you should be able to have a nice little harvest of prickly pear tunas! Honestly you don't even have to stick it in the ground, we have a small little cactus garden kinda out of the way on the back part of our property, want to know how it got there? That was our dumping ground for any pads that had fallen or had been trimmed off in our purposely established cactus garden. No watering, no outside help at all, all we did was dump a ton of them on the ground and off they went and now were harvesting fruit from this cast off garden. But if you do want to get them off to the best start possible I would suggest planting a pad or two upright in the ground. Prickly pears are probably the easiest plant to to plant or care for so don't go worrying about having a green thumb, just start thinking of all the ways you're going to use those wonderful pink and purple fruits and let the cactus do all the work! ;)
Harvesting and Using: The How To
But how does one go about harvesting those lovely red fruits? Unlike a grapefruit or pomegranate the tunas can have some serious armor. Well hold on, read on, I'm here to tell you how to handle those little stickers!
There are lots of things you can do with the fruits we make everything from jelly, syrup, lemonade, a friend of ours even made fruit roll ups out of them! All of these things involve juicing the fruits which thankfully is very easy. You can eat the fruits whole but then there's more risk for getting small stickers called glochids in your hands and the inside of the fruits they are filled with tons of hard little seeds so honestly I don't think it's worth the effort trying to keep the fruits whole. That is just my opinion though, if you want to try it, go for it! Grab some gloves and start peeling, good luck!
Since I don't have a ton of experience processing the fruits to keep them whole I won't go into detail with that, I will however give you guide on how to juice them. In the future, keep an eye out on this blog for possibly some of my favorite prickly pear recipes!
Step 1:
The first thing you need to do before you start picking and juicing the fruits is realize now matter how hard you try, you are almost definitely going to get a sticker in your hands SOME HOW. Look closely at your fruit, most likely you'll see what looks like some fuzzy stuff, that my friend is a wonderful thing called glochids. That fuzzy stuff is possibly hundreds of tiny little stickers that are INCREDIBLY hard to see and remove with tweezers. See them, have some duct tape on hand, and be ready for the possible frustration of trying to remove something you can't see, only feel.
Step 2:
Now that that's out of the way, lets get to the fun stuff! First things first, you'll need to pick the fruit obviously, I would suggest a long pair of kitchen tongs and a five gallon bucket.
Step 3:
Once you have collected yourself a nice bunch of fruits you'll need to knock off as much of the stickers as possible. I'm going to tell your how we do it but feel free to get creative or to try another method. Some people burn them off, and I'm sure there's some of methods out here but here's how we do it:
First find yourself a nice patch of gravel, some place you don't see yourself walking barefoot in for a long time. Dump out all your fruit on this nice patch of gravel and using a leaf rake rake the fruits back and forth, this motion knocks off a majority of the little glochids and almost all of the big thorns. Don't worry about getting them ALL off. The wonderful thing about prickly pear cactus juice is that it is acidic, after you juice the fruits let the fruit sit for 12-24 hours and any little glochids you missed should be dissolved in the juice!
Step 3:
Next you'll want to dust off your fruit and take them inside, you can rinse them individually or stick a bunch in a water bath like we do and take them from there and stick them in a juicer! Be careful juicing them though, they can be hard on a juicer and can clog up ours fairly quickly especially when processing a lot so be sure to check the inside of your juicer to make sure it won't clog.
After you juice them, as mentioned before I would suggest letting the juice sit in the fridge for at least 12 hours for any stickers to dissolve, after that have fun! There are tons of ways to use the juice! And again, I'm sure I'll be sharing some of my family's favorite prickly pear recipes on this blog in the near future. The prickly pear cactus is an amazing creation and I hope you consider growing some.
Until next time, Happy Homesteading!
~Ruby~
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| A huge Rabbit Ear Prickly Pear cactus pad. |
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| Violet Prickly Pear |
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| Pancake Prickly Pear. found on www.delange.org/PricklyPear/PricklyPear.htm |
The Benefits
Prickly pear cactus are amazing, the only con I can think of for growing and harvesting the tunas is that they have thorns. But when compared to all the benefits it is a small price to pay to eat these tasty and nutritious fruits.
Does the Prickly Pear Cactus have any health benefits? Yes indeed! Prickly Pear Cactus are a wonderfully nutritional food high in Vitamin C, fiber and in our experience they are great for raising your metabolism and lowering your blood sugar.
And do you need to be a experienced gardener to grow such marvelous plants? Ha! These guys could literally grow ANYWHERE and do a fabulous job all on their own. All you have to do is cut off a pad from an established plant, stick it in the ground, maybe water it a little to get it established and there you go! Give it a couple years and you should be able to have a nice little harvest of prickly pear tunas! Honestly you don't even have to stick it in the ground, we have a small little cactus garden kinda out of the way on the back part of our property, want to know how it got there? That was our dumping ground for any pads that had fallen or had been trimmed off in our purposely established cactus garden. No watering, no outside help at all, all we did was dump a ton of them on the ground and off they went and now were harvesting fruit from this cast off garden. But if you do want to get them off to the best start possible I would suggest planting a pad or two upright in the ground. Prickly pears are probably the easiest plant to to plant or care for so don't go worrying about having a green thumb, just start thinking of all the ways you're going to use those wonderful pink and purple fruits and let the cactus do all the work! ;)
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| Our "cast off" cactus garden. |
Harvesting and Using: The How To
But how does one go about harvesting those lovely red fruits? Unlike a grapefruit or pomegranate the tunas can have some serious armor. Well hold on, read on, I'm here to tell you how to handle those little stickers!
There are lots of things you can do with the fruits we make everything from jelly, syrup, lemonade, a friend of ours even made fruit roll ups out of them! All of these things involve juicing the fruits which thankfully is very easy. You can eat the fruits whole but then there's more risk for getting small stickers called glochids in your hands and the inside of the fruits they are filled with tons of hard little seeds so honestly I don't think it's worth the effort trying to keep the fruits whole. That is just my opinion though, if you want to try it, go for it! Grab some gloves and start peeling, good luck!
Since I don't have a ton of experience processing the fruits to keep them whole I won't go into detail with that, I will however give you guide on how to juice them. In the future, keep an eye out on this blog for possibly some of my favorite prickly pear recipes!
Step 1:
The first thing you need to do before you start picking and juicing the fruits is realize now matter how hard you try, you are almost definitely going to get a sticker in your hands SOME HOW. Look closely at your fruit, most likely you'll see what looks like some fuzzy stuff, that my friend is a wonderful thing called glochids. That fuzzy stuff is possibly hundreds of tiny little stickers that are INCREDIBLY hard to see and remove with tweezers. See them, have some duct tape on hand, and be ready for the possible frustration of trying to remove something you can't see, only feel.
Step 2:
Now that that's out of the way, lets get to the fun stuff! First things first, you'll need to pick the fruit obviously, I would suggest a long pair of kitchen tongs and a five gallon bucket.
Step 3:
Once you have collected yourself a nice bunch of fruits you'll need to knock off as much of the stickers as possible. I'm going to tell your how we do it but feel free to get creative or to try another method. Some people burn them off, and I'm sure there's some of methods out here but here's how we do it:
First find yourself a nice patch of gravel, some place you don't see yourself walking barefoot in for a long time. Dump out all your fruit on this nice patch of gravel and using a leaf rake rake the fruits back and forth, this motion knocks off a majority of the little glochids and almost all of the big thorns. Don't worry about getting them ALL off. The wonderful thing about prickly pear cactus juice is that it is acidic, after you juice the fruits let the fruit sit for 12-24 hours and any little glochids you missed should be dissolved in the juice!
Step 3:
Next you'll want to dust off your fruit and take them inside, you can rinse them individually or stick a bunch in a water bath like we do and take them from there and stick them in a juicer! Be careful juicing them though, they can be hard on a juicer and can clog up ours fairly quickly especially when processing a lot so be sure to check the inside of your juicer to make sure it won't clog.
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| See that stuff on top of the water? those are all little glochids! |
Until next time, Happy Homesteading!
~Ruby~
