permaculture

[Mikal Jakubal <mjakubal@asis.com>]

I just stopped by the Luther Burbank Gardens in Santa Rosa, CA. For $5
each, they sold me a pad of Burbank's "Actual" and one of "Texas Feeder."
Both are spineless varieties bred for edible pads (the latter for cattle,
though this doesn't seem to have caught on) and fruit. They are genuinely
thornless--I planted them today with bare hands. According to the head
gardener there, they are only cold-tolerant down to the mid-twenties or so.
Apparently Burbank used warm-climate varieties for his breeding work. Just
for fun, when these bloom, I'm going to cross them with the Opuntia ficus
indica (regular ol' mildly thorny "prickly pear") that I have and know to
be very cold-tolerant. Maybe in a few years I'll be able to report a
thornless, hardy variety. Who knows...? While I was at the Gardens, I
picked up a fallen cactus fruit, the seeds from which will be a random
cross of two Burbank varieties. We'll see what that yields.

Mikal