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Prickly Pear Taste Trials and Seeds Planted

How bout them Hogs? Eh, well, how about some first time tastes of Opuntia cultivars!

O phaeacantha "Plum".  Small because it grew and ripened on a cutting pad.  Sweet with no tartness at all. Looking forward to mature plant pears.


O phaeacantha "Kaibab Red".  First and only pear from an in-ground plant at the community orchard, planted last year. Nice size, sweet with just a hint of tart, making it delicious and interesting.



O dulcis (dulcis latin; sweet).   All of these pears were green on cutting pads ordered earlier this year and rooted in Root Pouch grow bags on the porch and driveway. All but a couple made it to full ripe but smaller than I expect mature plant pears will be. Flavor is sweet, no tartness.  




O ?...  There's a story with the next cultivar going back to the first post in this blog.  I just today discovered it is not the same as the Opuntia lindheimeri var. subarmata as I suspected it was, though there isn't much difference in appearance, the difference is in the flavor.

These pears are sweet with just a hint of tart, very edible and delicious, contrary to the super tart Opuntia lindheimeri var. subarmata and are fully ripe whereas the subarmata pears all appear to need at least a couple more weeks to ripen.


 The pulp around the seeds reminds me a bit of a good Dragon Fruit, while the meaty flesh under the skin is like a good melon.  I ate all three of these pears and wanted more.  There's about a dozen more out there and the nice lady who donated the pads initially is bringing me all the pears from the mother plant. A cactus pear feast will be had! 




  All the seeds from all these pears have been collected, de-pulped and washed in the Vita-Mix and planted.  I'll post some photo's of them currently and will make an update if and when some begin to sprout.


 Not included in the above photo are about three-hundred  O ? I call Regina Oliver Unknown, all planted in one food prep container.

I neglected to harvest the O x Woodsii 'Wildfire" pears before they were over-ripe and ravaged by ants and so there was no taste test to report.

A few more seeds were ordered yesterday from The Cactus Store . com to add to these mentioned here for a worthy winter project...

O engelmannii var. texana - 500 seeds
O robusta - 1000 seeds

An 8-bulb T-5 light fixture with Eye Hortilux grow bulbs hangs in the corner of my room and I'll be fabricating a table for the cacti babies or at least to look at the containers now and then.  

Opuntia seeds can take a very long time to sprout, some up to two years in previous outdoors pots but I have never tried controlled germination with a constant damp media and humidity covers. 

It will be interesting...  

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