Episode 9: The Secret Life of Cacti

Scott Calhoun is a aboriginal Arizonan , so he ’d learn a lot of cactus on desert hikes as a boy scout , but it was n’t until he was an adult that he truly discovered cacti , and not for the reason you might conceive . Calhoun says it all get for him with a common prickly pear in a vacant lot next to the house he and his wife moved into when they come back to Tucson in 1986 .

“ The common setose pear cactus that ’s around here , Englemann ’s prickly pear – this vacant stack had a bunch of this setaceous pear tree , ” he aver . “ It was August when we lead out and started pick these vast , magenta - red yield off that plant , and the juice is just this fantastic succus . It makes great lemonade and margarita . ”

In this episode of Garden Confidential , Calhoun , source ofThe Gardener ’s template to Cactus : The 100 Best Paddles , Barrels , Columns and Globes , talks about all the grandiloquent narrative fence in this much maligned group of spiny plant life , what you might not know about them , and why we should be develop more .

“ What I see now is these plant set about really well integrate … Now cactus are becoming part of a garden with everything going on – with cosmetic grasses and perennials and woody plant – so I suppose that ’s one of the things that I see that ’s interchange people ’s perceptions , ” he says . “ There are cactus that grow almost everywhere . ”

There will be prickly pear lemonade , crazy cactus collector , peyote , and a fillip presentation : a satirical interview with a cactus “ subsister , ” Kaveh Maguire , garden graphic designer and blogger atPlant Propaganda . Tune in for more .

Music from this podcast byccMixterusersAwel , Alex , andZapac , and Kevin MacLeod ( Incompetech.com ) .

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