Featured Plant of the Week: Eastern Prickly Pear
Friday August 15, 2008
I visit a lot of gardens, but one of my favorites belongs to a couple who love to grow fruits. I think I love their garden because it brings back memories of my grandfather’s garden. There’s a small, well-maintained vegetable garden surrounded by meticulously tended gooseberries, currents, Italian peaches, paw-paws and pears. There are also a few flower gardens around the house, but you can tell flowers are not their first love.
Still, the first time I visited, the wife pointed me toward a small bed at the side of the house. It was filled with prickly pears. Eastern prickly pears, to be more exact. This was a Zone 5 garden and I’d never seen a garden bed of blooming cactus in the area before. It was charming.
Since then I’ve thought about planting prickly pear every now and then, but I don’t really have a spot for it. My water table is high enough to start a water garden in my basement. But there are a couple planted in a display garden nearby and I still find them charming. So today I’ll temp you with Eastern prickly pear, a touch of the Southwest for any garden.
Photo: © Marie Iannotti (2008) licensed to About.com, Inc.
Comments
I grow Prickly Pear in Zone 5 (Toronto, Canada)and it does very well. We have drainage issues in our predominantly clay soil so I placed the cacti in a slightly raised bed amended with oodles of sand, included rocks and small rock-garden filler plants, and away we go. The flowers are stupendous and the fact that we’re groing perennial cacti in cold climes a constant source of discussion and delight to visitors.
Any advice for weeding around them?
Yes, several:
1. plant dense ground cover near them to keep weeds down
2. or mulch with small pea gravel for the same reason
3. use a long weed cutter or narrow trowel to dig up weeds, even if that means just flipping them to safe-handling ground
4. … and my favourite … chopsticks! (You can get really long cooking chopsticks from Asian stores)
Also, if cacti need to be handled for any reason, use several layers of newspaper to hold them or push them aside. Discard newspaper immediately – do not re-use. Don’t use cloth gardening gloves unless you plan to throw them out since the little prickles will stay lodged in there for ever.
Staying prickle-free is half the fun of growing them
There are several in my town,
central nj(zone 6), but I’ve never seen them blooming.
I think they’re great, even if don’t bloom.
I grow them in Michigan. I planted them with hen and chicks. Their blooms are beautiful. I use old kitchen thongs for weeding.
There’s an extensive ‘wild’ patch of prickly pears growing on the top of Hook Mountain in Rockland County, on an unprotected outcropping of the mountain that overlooks the Hudson River about 15 miles north of New York City. Thye must be pretty sturdy- it’s very exposed! I’m going to try them in my garden in NYC.