chaniarts wrote in
:

On 6/28/2013 9:20 AM, KenK wrote:
I live in the southwest desert and am having a cactus problem.

I have a very large 9 - 10 foot cactus in my yard - prickly pear I
think it is, the one with the rosy red large edible buds - which lost
about half the plant through a breakoff.

Anyway, I'm slowly cleaning up the corpse. This variety of cactus has
very fine thorns, like fur, but very very irritating. I hate to use
good fabric gloves to handle the pieces for fear the thorns will
probably imbed themselves and make the gloves unusable for anything
else. True? I think the thorns will go right through latex gloves.
Any convenient way to handle the large pieces other than piercing and
moving them with a big knife or screwdriver? Not very convenient.

Next question - a way to get the thorns out of my skin? They are so
small they are almost invisible to my aging eyes to get out with
tweezers.

TIA



chop the pieces up with a shovel, and then you can pick them up with
large kitchen tongs or even the shovel.

i use clear packing tape to remove the small thorns. duct tape would
also work, but also pull out any hairs on your skin too.



Both sound like excellent suggestions! Never thought of cutting up the
cactus or using tape. Brilliant!



--
"Where there's smoke there's toast!" Anon