Growing Nopales in the USA

One of my favorite vegetable is Nopal, or cactus pads, like they are known in the USA.  They are very common in Mexico City, where I grew up and I used to eat them every week.  My favorite nopal dish is one where they are cut in pieces, boiled and then used in a salad with tomatoes, onions, cilantro and oil,vinegar and spices.  This salad is sold at the market and it is delicious.

I rarely eat nopales here in Florida because you can only find them at Mexican groceries and there are not many near my home.  Well, the other day I offered to spay a female cat that a family was feeding.  When I returned the cat to them, I asked them if the plant they had in the front was a nopal that you could eat.  The mom said yes so I asked her if I could have some pads to cook.  She gave me a dozen and I happily cooked half of them.  Then I started thinking how great it would be if I could have a plant in my garden and I could just go and cut some whenever I wanted to.  I researched how to grow them and the info on the net said it was easy, just to let them form a dry "scab" on the place where they had been cut from the plant and after a week, put them in some sandy soil.  They said not to overwater them and to place them upright.  I did it and today I saw that they had roots!!!.  I planted two in the garden and I am keeping one in a pot just in case something happen to the other ones.

 

Usually nopales have a lot of thorns but this variety had only small ones.  I do use gloves when handling this ones because I do not want to end up with little thorns in my hands.

 

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