Arizona – Sonora Desert Museum: Prickly Pear Harvest

August is the season that the beautiful red fruit of the prickly pear cactus ripens.

Join us in harvesting this fruit, cleaning it, practicing three different ways of rendering juice from it, and learning how to make jelly. But, the fruit is only half of the edible goods! The tender green pads can also be eaten.

There are oh-so-many prickly pear species! Find out about our local ones, as well as those from southern Mexico that have been bred for over a millennia to be spineless. We’ll show you how to select, clean, grill, and pickle the pads, as well as share other natural history bits surrounding the nopal.