Making Prickly Pear Cactus

hminky

Member
I have a web article on how I make pr!ckly pear cactus at:

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/scenery/cactus/

cactus_promo.jpg


Thank you if you visit :wave:
Harold
 

Matthyro

Will always be re-membered
Another great how to Harold. Your website is amazing with so much help on things that interest us model railroaders.
 

ezdays

Out AZ way
Harold,

My wife would be pleased to have a couple of those in our yard. The real ones grow like crazy even when you don't water them. These would be ideal.:D:D

Great work, I can vouch for their authenticity.:thumb:
 

Woodie

Active Member
Prickly Pear!! AAAARRGHHHHH!!

It is a declared noxious weed here, and you can be fined if found growing it. :eek: It was a major invasive pest in the early parts of last century.

The situation is hopeless...
By 1925, prickly pear was completely out of control, infesting some twenty-five million hectares in New South Wales and Queensland. It was spreading at the rate of half a million hectares a year and nobody could stop its progress!

Tremendous effort went into mechanical and chemical treatment programs, but the pear could not be contained.

The historical photo, right, shows one of the early and drastic treatment methods - fumes from a boiling arsenic mixture drifting across the pear (circa 1919 - photographer unknown). According to former Commissioner Garry Ryan, this method was used with some success during the clearing of land for the building of the Moree-Boggabilla railway line.
NB. The Queensland Prickly Pear Land Commission 1926 annual report stated that the amount of poison sold in Queensland that year would treat 9,450,000 tons of prickly pear! Chemicals included 31,100 (10 & 20lb) tins of arsenic pentoxide and 27,950 containers (ranging in size from 2g earthenware jars to 42g steel drums) of Roberts Improved Pear Poison. (I have no figures for the chemical treatment program undertaken in New South Wales during this same period.)

from ***click here***

However, it's control was one of the most successful biological control of a pest ever done, with the introduction of the cactoblastus beetle, that went and ate it all! Now, prickly pear is nowhere to be seen.
 

ezdays

Out AZ way
Wow Woodie, and my wife thought that the ones we had in our front yard were a problem.:eek: Even here in Arizona, they grow like weeds. You can start one by breaking off an ear and planting it. Just a bit of water at first, and a few years later you have a plant that is five foot high and ten foot across. They bloom with red pear-shaped fruit, lots of them. Every tourist shop in Arizona sells cactus jelly made from this fruit. :cool:
 

Zman

Member
Hey Harold, considering Woodie's post, I'd keep an eye on those buggers lest they take over your layout.
 
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