Cactus, being drought-tolerant plants, don’t like rain, right? Select ones may not, but it has been my experience that while cactus and succulents certainly survive without water, they thrive with it. In moderate amounts, of course. Give them a good rain shower and they just go crazy; they plump up, grow, and make glorious flowers. The key is good drainage and not letting them sit and stay soggy for days. We finally have had rain over the last two weeks and everything perked up, cactus included. I also collect rain water in barrels, for those stretches when rain is seldom seen, and use that to water my cactus. The picture above was taken after we had the first of the rain. You can see they just outdid themselves.
See that nice green grass in the pasture behind the prickly pear? We haven’t seen that in Muleshoe for it seems like forever.
And a good rain on the cactus bed makes it so much easier to weed. I didn’t think to take a before picture, but we all know how unkempt and messy and ugly any flower bed looks with weeds, but I think cactus look even sadder, and the bad part is that once the weeds take over, it is really hard to get them out and under control again. It is also much easier to grab a weed hiding a cactus,and well, as you know, you will come up with a handful of spines. So when you are blessed with rain, seize the moment and get down and dirty pulling those weeds. The fact that the ground is soft allows the weed to come up easier which makes it easier on your hands with the weeds closest to the spines of the cactus.
So make sure your cactus aren’t sitting in water, that their soil is porous enough for good drainage, let them dry out completely after the rain has drenched them: then sit back and enjoy.
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