Do we ‘De-Thorn’ our Cactus Before Shipping?

   We  had a customer ask if we de-thorn the cactus leaves before shipping….

   Here’s what I wrote back…..

 

 

   We don’t do any cleaning on them. They have a waxy coating on them naturally, to keep moisture in. The stomata (little holes for transpiration) on most plants open during the daytime to allow the photosynthesis process to run and exchange gases…. but cactus keeps those pores closed in the daytime so that it doesn’t lose moisture, it opens them in the evening and exchanges its gasses while it is cool and relatively moister outside. Each night it pulls in carbon dioxide, and stores it in special cells.  It will also release its oxygen that it stored up during the day while it was in the process of converting the carbon to oxygen through the chlorophyll in the leaves. It’s a pretty slick way to work around the local temperature extremes and water shortages. But it also helps us in shipping. We try to do most of our picking early in the day. This is when we reckon the leaves have less free oxygen in them.  The high presence of oxygen will oxidize the leaves sooner. When we pick and ship the leaves, they already have their stomata closed. They will open in the box, and warm moist air will envelope the leaves. They store pretty well in those conditions, so shipping is not too bad on them as long as they don’t get crushed.

 

 

   It is for a similar reason that we don’t scrub them down to de-thorn them. We don’t want to open the leaves to any pathogens. We want the leaves to get to you as nice as possible as the grade, maturity and shipping routine we use can allow.  We really want people to be stoked and excited at how good they are!

 

 

 

   But this brings up the other issue.. spines… in which our leaves are very admirably not really equipped with. In fact, you can handle these with plastic dishwashing gloves…. and all they need is a scrubbing down with a kitchen pad…. then a trim around the thin edges, and a rinse and pat-dry. So you might find yourself taking a minute per leaf once you have it down… that might take three leaves to get the routine…. it’s pretty easy, no more prep time than a bell pepper really or a cucumber

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

   You’ll notice that the leaf is pretty easy to handle… that is due to the refined variety we grow and sell.  The spiny ones are really tough to learn to clean, ours is very much better and easy to prepare.  

 

 

 

 

  Read this article to find out what happened what the Associated Press bought some and didn’t clean them! http://www.rivenrock.com/aparticlemar2004.htm

 

 

 

   We have other articles that talk of us at  http://www.rivenrock.com/presskit.htm

 

 

 

   Yes, the cleaning of them is not tough at all… and I should stress that a bit more in the literature.