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Whenever i pick them out they're never very sweet but they are dark red. How do you know if it's good before you buy it?

what type are you buying?
I dont know how sweet O. ficus indica is but I do know that O. engelmannii juice is very sweet.

Peterthecactusguy wrote:what type are you buying?
I dont know how sweet O. ficus indica is but I do know that O. engelmannii juice is very sweet.

I buy it from Caputos. I don't know if you have Caputos in Arizona. I really wish to make some kind of smoothie out of it.

I read online that a company in California is breeding better tasting ficus india fruit. It sems that the green ones have better flavor, but the marketplace prefers purple. I have a plant with green fruit growing at my place in the country and it set about 5 fruit this year. I`ll have to watch it and see when the fruit are ripe but before the birds get them.

There are many sweet near seedless varieties of Opuntia ficus indica. We have the same thing here with the grocery stores selling horrible tasting seedy fruits. It seems at least here in Florida that the fruits come from Opuntia ficus indica that are grown for vegetable with little concern with fruit quality. All of my ficus indica I grow for fruit quality. I have been gradually trying to go vegetarian or somewhat vegetarian and cactus have been part of that process.

One of my fruits was damaged and looked mature so I picked it. It is green and a little yellowish on the outside and the inside was orange, slightly sweet, and had lots of big seeds. I may put a bag over the other fruit to try to let them mature completely.

So far, it looks like this cultivar is not especially good for fruit. It would be best to scoop out the pulp and push it thru a screen to remove the seeds. I may just halve them with a knife and feed them to the chickens.