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The Opuntias where loaded with ripe fruit while I was in Tucson. Here you can see one plant that is actually not as full as others which I didn't get pictures of:



So I picked a bucket full...


...and brought them home to make jelly and juice:


Mashing them in the canning colander:


Here is the pulp and seeds (anybody want to grow some Opuntia from seed?


And the desired result - juice!


There is a recipe for cactus punch on the Tucson club site and I will make that as well as some jelly. I will have to run the juice through some cheese cloth first to ensure that there are no glochids that got through the colander.

I will update when I further process it. Right now, I've got 1 and 1/2 ice cream buckets full of juice. (about 7 quarts).

Looks good Daiv! I will have to try that with my fruits soon when they are ripe.

another way to do it is to burn off the glochids on a gas grill or with a blow torch and then you squish them through a nylon, ya know panty hose... lol.. It sounds funny but it works great. I made 6 jars of PP jelly. I will do an thingy on it. I didnt take any pictures because I forgot my camera.. I will write down the recipe too. Its very easy but takes about 3 hours to do from start to finish.

The jelly turned out great - will post some pictures of it soon.

Daiv cool The only glochid I got was in my foot cause I work my nike running shoes and dropped a fruit onto my foot.