Actually the eastern prickly pear is correctly named Opuntia humifusa and
the purple Cholla is now Cylindropuntia imbricata.

The best way to handle the "stem segments" is with tongs.

Both are completely cold hardy and you can leave them outdoors over the
winter. Do not cover them in the winter. They should survive whether rooted
or not. I have had plants of O.humifusa survive the winter outdoors bare
rooted, not even in the ground.


"zxcvbob" wrote in message
...
Cereus-validus....... wrote:
What do you mean by "cactus cuttings"?

It all depents on what the plants actually are.

This is not the best time to be rooting cuttings anyway.

It tends to get cooler after the vernal equinox every year.



Yes I know that :-) It's not the right time of year to be starting them,
but it's when I found them, and they were too cheap to pass up. If they
die, I can try to find some again in the spring.

When I opened the box, I was very careful handling the cactus pads to
avoid the prickles, but I wasn't so careful with the wadded up newsprint
they were packed in... that was full of little stickers. I got them all
over me. It took me 2 days to get them all out.

These are Eastern Prickly Pears (Opuntia compressa), Tree Cholla (Opuntia
imbricata), and some kind of *very* large pad prickly pear that looks like
the ones I saw at Mesa Verde this summer.

Somehow I was expecting another month of warm weather for the cacti to
root, then I was gonna dig them up and bring them in the house. The
chollas are the ones I'm most interested in. The O. compressas are the
ones most likely to grow up here. If I can get the cacti thru the winter
and grow them out next year, I will try covering half of them with
styrofoam cones to see if they'll overwinter outside. The other half I'll
bring in, of course.

-Bob