Here is an interesting purple cactus called the Santa Rita Prickly Pear.
I used to think freezing caused these cacti to become purple but in fact they turn from green to purple naturally.
Here you can see a variation of green and purple pads. I'm not sure if the older pads eventually become green as they get thicker.
I just read up about these cacti and almost all parts of the plant are edible. The pads are kind of tangy and the prickly pears are tart and sweet.
These things grow easily in Southern Arizona and make a nice colorful landscaping plant that is also tasty.
In Southern Arizona most traditional landscaping doesn't survive for lack of water. But barrel cacti, and many other pad shaped cacti flourish.
This cacti also turns just slightly purple but has more elongated pads. I suspect it is edible as well. The thorns on this guy are a bit too long to mess with.
Here is a transplanted Santa Rita cactus. In a few years it will have many pads if the javelinas don't get to it.
Ocotillos are another easy desert plant to cultivate. People often plant them in rows to form a fence for their yard. No one would dare try and cross a fence full of thorns like this.
Just in case someone gets past your ocotillo fens you can plant landmines of fishhook barrel cacti. These ones have strong thorns that the Native Americans used for sewing leather.
The fruit is edible and sort of tastes like a bland okra. Probably not worth getting pierced for such a bland treat.
Agaves grow like weeds here. Plenty to harvest if you want to make tequila. They are also a low maintenance security landscaping device lol.
If any of your cactus do end up dying then you are left with interesting skeletal looking wood. I think this one came from a large cholla. An artist project could be to run some tube lighting on the inside to project interesting shadowd all over the place.
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)
Congratulations @sketch.and.jam! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 350000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out our last posts:
Hmmm, those agaves grow like weeds here too. They have no enemies although I have seen the snails chew strips off them
Those snails are pretty tough. Its a bit too dry for snails to survive out here. Thankfully if too many agaves grow plenty of agave nectar or tequila could be harvested out of them. The cleaning process is quite dangerous lol.
Tequila making looks messy. I cut the leaves off close to the stem, leave everything to dry nearby and then pile it up around the stems so that the winter fires can finish them and the offsets off. That's about the only way to keep them under control here unless you like digging.
Snails are very tough, they hibernate for months at a time and only really come out for a couple of weeks a year when it rains a lot. Then they go crazy eating the succulents
The poor succulents seem like a delicious treat compared to a tough old agave.
Yes, they have killed quite a few
Oohh!! 🌵🤩 Que variedad de cactus mas bella @sketch.and.jam nunca había visto esta especie de agave en color violeta, es bien hermosa !!
En mi colección la intentaré buscar, para tenerla en el jardín 🪴. Saludos y feliz día !! 😊
If you are in a desert environment they are quite easy to grow and there are quite a few variants of these purple cacti. Some have more round pads others longer bunny eared pads. Others have only purple on the outer edges.
Well not ambiance ambiance! But I have a collection of around 800 cacti in my city of various species in general and I am sure that this type of cactus 🌵 would adapt most well in the garden.
Too bad I've never seen it in Cuba 🇨🇺, but I'll try to see if they sell seeds to get it @sketch.and.jam on the internet. Best regards my friend and happy start of the week !!! 😊🤗🙏🏻 #cacti
I suspect it would be too humid for them to grow well in Cuba unless you have some lava rocks and sand to stash them in to help keep them dry. That is quite an impressive array of blooming succulents they seem to love it there.
Yes, the substrate I use is very sandy for cacti 🌵.
Purple cactus, I've never seen one like this, it looks interesting and unusual)
I used to think it was normal green cactus that was dying but then looked it up when I saw so many of them. There are quite a few of them with subtle variants in shape/color/size. Most are edible too if you have the patience to pick off the spines.
I have never seen a purple cactus, it is so beautiful
They're all over the southwest states, but it is hot and dry there not the greatest place to visit lol. But the cacti are quite interesting.
Interesting cacti photos 👍 I always love the nature landscaping in southern Arizona. But I do love the green summers here in Vermont. A nice grass yard and trees is nature landscaping here. First place I've lived without sprinkler systems and watering.
It's finally nice to be back in green Illinois. My sinuses are finally not dried out lol. I thought escaping the cold here would be nice but the nights over there are even colder than Illinois. There is something nice about easier gardening in a greener environment. Its such a perpetual fight in deserts, and these crazy powerful weeds like to steal the water.