I will go back and read your article again, then I can do prep work on the long narrow raised bed during the winter.

Thanks for directing me here @Cinta. But jeez - a whole article about Prickly Pear and you failed to mention the evil teensy thorns.

In my garden I have both types; with spines and spineless. This is an excellent article which focuses on the many positive attributes of the hardy cactus; I loved it.

Anyone who calls the plant by the name "Prickly Pear" probably already knows about the little thorns/prickles/spines. Guess there are always gonna be some folks who concentrate on the negatives in life. Sad.

Well - I wasn't focusing on the negatives. As you might notice elsewhere, I planted an Optunia on Tuesday. In fact, I made a new garden area just for it. About 80 square feet. Covered with rocks and sand and yesterday I added 5 Red Heart Hens & Chicks.

I would guess that most people likely take prickly to mean that it has thorns. Which I did. I was not aware of the teeny spines that are a rather ... pain. Spent over an hour pulling them out. My comment only meant that I thought it was amazing that an entire article was written and did not mention them. At least it could have been relegated to a footnote in an ultra tiny font. For sad people like me who were ignorant about them and do not have the greatest eyesight.

In the meantime, I WILL enjoy my new Optunia and will keep an eye out on other types of hardy cactus or cactus like plants I can add to the area. I am already thinking of moving a variegated Yucca that would compliment the Optunia.

Cheers and HAND

Now now David don't be a girl about the little pain. When they talk about roses they never tell you about the daggers they call thorns

Open Up and Say Ahhhh album by Poison Every Rose has a Thorn.

Yeah - I have a Rose Garden too Rose are spiny. Yeah - that's it -- spiny.

And YES - those can be really painful. That IS one of the few times I wear gloves when I prune them.
Trying to figure out what type gloves to use with the PP. Since the teeny PP thorns went right thru my wife's rose gloves. She is gonna be angry.

I do not touch them. So I do not get hurt by the cactus but the roses are killing me because I have to weed around. The cactus I do not have to weed that area.

I bleed every time I am around the roses

I only had to prune Opuntia once; my neighbor showed me a way that is safe for both the plants and the people involved.
Get a pair of oven mitts and place one mitt on each side of a long pair of barbecue tongs. Using metal tongs alone would leave gouges in the cactus but using padded tongs will not harm the cactus and will allow you to get a good grip. Then use a sharp machete to cut the plant. I also used the padded tongs to pot up the cuttings once they had dried.

Wow Greene - that is some superb advice.

Thank you very much, great article and I liked it very much as this is something I been interested in trying for some time. Very nice pictures as well .

Interesting plants for sure and very beautiful. In our climate here in Sweden, the usual advice is to cover them from September onwards with a piece of glass to keep them dry during autumn and winter as it can be on the wet side with a thaw-freeze cycle. Not sure if this is entirely necessary or not, but this aspect has perhaps put a lid on my enthusiasm a bit as I'm just useless in applying winter protection to plants. But perhaps some time I'll still give this a go!

William ... where I live we can have horrid winters with lotsa moisture, freeze/thaw, etc. The PP does fine here as I understand it. I am just starting on my first winter. Maybe get a start and just give it a try.

William the Cactus that are hardy will survive without protection. I had a patch of these next to a driveway. That area got all the snow shoveled from the driveway. By the end of winter there could be as much as eight feet of snow on top of them.

No way do hardy cactus need to be protected

And heck, @William Zone 7b would be like the tropics for me.

From my research, Prickly Pear is considered one of the hardiest.

William - you can check out many other "hardy" cactus here.

http://www.coldhardycactus.com

Keep us posted - please.

Well, that certainly sounds encouraging

However USDA zones don't translate well to our conditions, so there are a few pitfalls. The usual advice is to deduct one or two zones depending on the plant in question, but really there isn't many similarities in weather. Sometimes I think about removing the USDA zone from my profile as it could potentially be very misleading, although it technically is correct. We do have a coastal climate and our summers are cooler and shorter than in the US, and this affects the maturation process of many plants and therefore winter hardiness. Also our winters are probably longer than what you perhaps would expect from an USDA zone 7b. First frost can happen in September occasionally, and for instance a few years ago we where frozen solid from the middle of November to the middle of April. Frost free depth is more than three feet, granted this doesn't happen every year. Add to this the moisture as this is a coastal climate. Moisture during winter is a real and actual problem here for some plants. But, I'm not saying that this wouldn't work and I really appreciate the encouragement

This is a link (in English) to a very experienced grower in our neighbouring country Denmark and he lives slightly north of me, but still in a slightly warmer USDA zone.
http://www.bennyskaktus.dk/Har...
And direct link to specific hardiness data on many species and cultivars here: http://www.bennyskaktus.dk/Har...

It does look like rain cover is a good idea here, based on what he and other says, but this is only because our climate is so different from most part of the US. I do have a very sandy soil, with 25 feet of pure sand so this is to my advantage and I also have very tall pine trees that suck the moisture out of the soil as well and possibly being able to add natural rain protection. Perhaps if I made a raised bed close by...

If I do try, I might put them in pots at first and letting them spend the winter dry in our unheated greenhouse and try some outside in the winter at a later time. I will absolutely keep you posted if I do any of this and I have already scouted out a few vendors in Germany as these can be a bit hard to obtain here in Sweden, at least from commercial sources.

Well William - I knew you guys had bad weather, but that is absolutely wretched. Mostly kidding sir. One nice thing about posting here is that people are friendly, very helpful, willing to share, etc. And we are from all over the place. Which sometimes helps - sometimes not so much.

What I try to do is piece info together and see how it works for my situation. ( Obviously if someone posted here who only lived a few hundred miles away their advice would be most helpful to me. And anyone living within a couple hundred miles will face virtually the same conditions as me.)

I grow lots of Tropicals and conditions that someone in Florida faces some times are not too helpful for me. Even though we grow the same plant - e.g. Plumeria.

I will take some time and read further the provided link. Very interesting indeed.

Best of luck

Willism the zone thing in the US is just as bad. I am zone 6 according to the map. But I. have the same problem you described.

Our rainy season starts in September. Just when the ground is water logged the rain changes to freezing rain which changes to snow. I end up with bock of ice around the plant roots.

For this problem I use gravel. The cactus are over gravel with a sprinkle of soul. That is 90 percent gravel 10 percent soil

David, agreed this is a great place, for the people, for the idea sharing and for so many other reasons! I do find it very interesting to read how others do with there plants in other conditions as well, just curious I guess, but sometimes it can also be very helpful and inspiring, even if one would need to tweak growing methods a bit or simply be satisfied looking at a nice picture. About the climate, well for me it's quite good actually as I hate summer heat So, I'm not complaining, except perhaps on the behalf of the cactus .

Thank you Cinta and the method with gravel for sure is a good one. Similar methods are used here as well, not only for cactus, but also to increase hardiness of other plants.

Yes, of course the USDA zone systems has some weaknesses even for you
In Sweden we luckily have our own zone system and it's based more on what is possible to actually grow, rather than temperature averages. Still this also has some pitfalls and by that I don't just mean soil conditions, micro climate factors and so on. Sweden is a small country so many plants that would be hardy, are not very known and have no known zone hardiness. It's widely recognized that the more reliable snow cover up north benefits the survival of some perennials and bulbs, making them growable out of zone, depending on where they originate from of course.

What I think you have going for you Cinta, is perhaps that when winters sets in it probably also gets dry. Frozen ground and snow are dry (from a plants perspective) even if it in reality contains a lot of water. The air also dries up when its been frozen a long time and snow is also the ideal winter insulation. The other thing is how fast it goes when the ground thaws in the spring and freezes in the Autumn. I'm uncertain of your conditions, but here this process is usually long, it can take months or in fact can be an ongoing process through the whole winter. Especially in spring a lot of sensitive plants can rot away. Hard frost without snow cover is rather common here as well. That said there are some reports about certain species of Opuntia surviving without rain protection in Sweden

Yes a foot or two of snow on top of plants IS wonderful. Insulation from the wind and constant temp at 32 degrees F. Much better than freeze/thaw/freeze/thaw and repeat. That causes frost heaves that lift plants up and can expose roots. Of course about that time an animal drops by and says YUM!!

One major benefit that I have with my micro-climate is that there are a lot of trees to my West and particularly Northwest. There is a heavily wooded area going up a slope so the trees are 50 + feet above the top of my house. This really knocks down the wind and wind chill is far more damaging than temperature alone.

I'm lucky here in that the soil is perfectly drained during winter, so no problems with frost heave. With your very heavy soil it must be a big problem.
Speaking of animals... Although I would feel a bit sorry for it, it would be most satisfying to see how in the world a Swedish deer, hungry for an exotic meal, would approach an Opuntia