I love me some prickly pears! Recently I have moved back to my home town of Tucson,AZ where we have lots of native cacti including a bounty of PP.
Here's what I can share of my experience, I’ll do my best to keep on topic:
First, as mentioned, there are countless varieties of Opuntia, and they vary greatly in so many respects. Spines, pad size/shape, growth habit/height, climate preference, flower colors, fruit size/qualities etc.
I think a smart place to start is addressing the spines and bristles! Some varieties have more of the aforementioned fuzzy little mini stickers. I have just learned these are called glochids. Those are infinitely more unpleasant in your skin than simple thorny spines. spines you just grab and pull out. Bristles you reach for the duct tape and elmers glue. I've found the glue to work a little better, just say goodbye to most of your hair. Apply a thin smear of glue over the affected area and after it dries you peel it off, taking the fuzzy bristles with it. I've had a couple unfortunate run-ins (literally) growing up a desert rat and I tell you it can take HOURS to remove the bristly fuzz from all over a wailing child...
Fortunately for me the best local fruiting types have more spines and just a few glochids. Never tried a blowtorch and never felt inclined to. sounds like tons of extra work to me. Just wear long sleeves and pants of course, throw your clothes in a hot wash after and I've never had trouble with the little buggers. More bristley species might warrant greater measures (boil your clothes?).
I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE EYE PROTECTION, but that's cause I've had my cornea scratched before by airborne glochids and it was agonizing. That incident did not happen during harvesting, nor was it from a fruiting type PP, just being a kid playing in the desert. Don't harvest on a breezy day and NEVER touch your face, eyes, or crotch during harvest or propagation. These are common sense of course but still worth a warning for those who've never dealt with bristly cactus.
Harvesting itself is a breeze with a bucket or 5 and a pair of the longest tongs you can find. I use the tongs and harvest gently. Grasp the tuna and twist. If they’re ripe the fruit come off easily and you don't get many of those mini stickers/fuzz going airborne. its amazing how fast you can fill up buckets in a thick patch. you hardly take 2 steps and you need another bucket. I can see how pruning/shaping them into taller, openly branched "trees" might be cool but they just grow wild in such thick patches that there has never been any trouble picking all we care to process without needing to bother for any hard to reach fruit.
We have the round magenta red ones similar to Abe's pic at the first post and another good variety that has taller, more oblong fruit with a deeper burgundy color on the skin. Both primary types, and one or two more red variations seem to produce very similar juice in quality and color. Only really used them for juice and jelly, which are both delicious. It's been many years since I tried the fresh fruit but as I recall it was lackluster. I would love, LOVE to get ahold of some nice fresh figgy varieties. I've never had one but apparently the more yellow/orange fruited types can be better as fresh fruit.
To PROCESS the fruit, Mom just rinses them off and runs them thorns and all through a "berry press" and out flows the juice! That's it!
The spines and bristles don't come through at all. If you don't have a juicer you can mash the fruit and boil the spines away (extracting the juice at the same time), or roast the whole fruits real quick in a wide shallow basket over an open flame. This will burn them off pretty efficiently and we did that method until discovering the juicer. The juice press is the quickest easy way to get what your after and this one filters out all the spines. The fruit is VERY JUICY and YIELDS LOTS of juice. Of course you could boil the pulp a bit to extract some more, weak quality, juice but the pure juice is definitely the creme de la creme. The vibrant magenta color juice we get is not very sweet fresh which is why it is usually boiled down into syrup, jelly, wine etc. We do put the pure juice in lemonade though to make the best pink lemonade! you can freeze the juice in ice cube trays and then collect them. Mom still fills bags with these pink cubes in the freezer. Just pop a couple cubes into your preferred drink and it turns pink with some prickly pear flavor. Jelly is a big hit too. haven't got the syrup technique down yet but I'll be working on it next crop.
Have not ever processed the seeds but I've read they (and other tiny seeded cactus like saguaro and organ pipe) are nutritious. Apparently these seeds were a valuable food source to the aboriginals of this area, especially if other foods suffered in drought. I think they toasted them and ground them up, then mixed into a drink.
PROPAGATING the pads vegetatively is the fastest and easiest way to cultivate the prickly pear. It is also very common in nature. If a pad is dislodged and laying on the ground it will usually sprout roots and forms a new plant. Plenty about that already here so I'll talk about seeds. I've not actually sprouted seeds of PP but I have sprouted saguaro and golden barrel seeds which I think very likely to be essentially the same. All are tiny black seeds. Some suggest scarifying the seed which can be done easily by combining fine sand and seeds in your palm, then rub your hands together. We used a low flat tray, only 1-2 inches tall with drain holes, filled with extra sandy soil. Simply sprinkle the tiny seeds in, sprinkle a bit more sand on top, and water. Keep the sand moist until the sprouts start to emerge. A Spray bottle or mister is good because it is gentle and applies just enough water. One can cover the trays early on to keep things humid and not have to spray them all the time. If covered with plastic (a bag works) I suggest removing the cover for at least a few minutes daily to ventilate well and discourage mold. I don't remember how long it takes but I remember they came up thick as a carpet. After they emerge remove any moisture trapping cover immediately but continue regular watering. The little babies naturally sprout during the monsoon season, when thundershowers are a daily occurence. Make sure the tray drains well though so you don’t waterlog it, just keep it moist. They will want to be propogated in partial shade. In nature they sprout in the milder microclimate of a nurse plant such as mesquite, palo verde etc. If you don't have a convenient location in partial shade you can simply lay a small piece of shade cloth over the flat. They start off pretty slow, so be patient. After the tiny, spikey, sedlings start to take shape and show some green divide them up and transplant either into pots or the ground. About the size of a pencil eraser, or your small fingernail, seemed to work well. If going directly to ground we place a small wire cage around the transplant to protect it for a while. There are some tough critters around here called javelinas that will munch on PP, espcially if water is scarce. Babies are also susceptible to rabbits and deer. Mostly the cage marks their location as they are really hard to see when they are this small. Saguaro and barrel cactus both grow slower than pp. We left the cages on for the first several years until the cactus outgrows the cage.
If anyone wants to sprout some, I'd be happy to provide seeds from the next crop, but that won’t be until August or September.
I am very confident PP on top of a hugel mound will work well. We have a large shelter belt along the roadway that was built up, and planted, over a decade ago. A low area was filled in with some brush and lots of horse manure. Then soil (silty flood leavings) was put on top and PP pads planted as well as chollas and a few other things. The cactus seem to love it there and between prickly pear and cholla they have formed a fairly impenetrable hedge that yields lots of PP fruit, edible cholla buds, and is habitat to many small animals. Birds, reptiles, and mammals. This area is wide and level, not really a raised mound as commonly built with hugelkultur. I am just now building a taller, skinnier, more typical, raised hugelberm along another side of the property for flood control. Using the same basic recipe of brush, manure, soil. Berm gets nearly full sun and even with mulch I'm sure the top will get pretty dry much of the year. We average just 11inches/yr. I'll put a bunch of PP pads on top while leaving the moister,low area north of the berm for (slightly) more thirsty plants. As the PP grows up it will create a living thorny fence that shades the North side, creating a milder microclimate down there. The South side of this berm mostly bounds the driveway. Hopefully chiletepin will like it there and be able to sprout back in spring above whatever groundcovers can establish domain on the harsh hot side of the berm.
Feeling pretty longwinded with this post, but there is yet another use for PP that has not been mentioned yet in this thread. The use of the mucilaginous flesh of the mature pads to STABILIZE EARTH for building purposes. Plaster, rammed earth, adobe etc. I've no experience with this but will be trying it out soon on some small test experiments. Apparently the pads are chopped up well and left to soak/ferment for a time (weekish?). The resulting mash is then strained and the liquid mixed with earth for Adobe or RE. This is reported to impart the finished wall a measure of resistance to water and weather. I think it can be applied as a render coating over the top of a dried earth wall, or plaster, as well. I'm eager to test it out and will do some test bricks alongside untreated controls.
