To grow an Opuntia cactus (prickly pear or cholla), you simply find a place where it will grow, and drop a piece of the plant there. The place should have sun for more than six hours, without shade. The soil should never flood, and should dry out often. It's great if nothing else grows there already, since cacti don't compete very well with other plants and weeds.

If you don't have a good dry place in the sun, take a wet place in the sun, and make a raised bed there. That is, pile up the soil there, or make a box about 12 inches (30cm) above the highest water, and fill it up with sandy soil. Compost mixed in will make the plants grow lush. It looks nice to add large, flat rocks on top of the soil, and then place the pads or stems onto the bare soil patches. The rocks also help to keep the stem in the position you like.

How do you take the cutting? Well, for a prickly pear, just about any piece, a whole pad or even only half of one, will do just fine. You can cut it from the plant with scissors or a knife. You can also find pieces which have broken off themselves. Let the cut surface dry out for about three days, so it can make itself immune to fungi. Then it's ready to root. You will need no rooting hormones, so just place the piece where you want it.

If the plant was a cholla, with long or cylindrical stems, then take care to cut off the piece where there is a joint between two sections of stem. Or you can take a piece which breaks off easily or has already broken off. Let it dry like the prickly pear (above), then plant it the same. Don't expect new growth from the tip of the stem. Often, the new growth comes from the bottom.

Whichever type it is, let the plant grow the way it wants to, and don't try to prop it up or correct the way it grows. The plants always will correct themselves again. You will not get a tall prickly pear in a very cold climate (let me know if you do), and you will not get a single-stemmed cylindrical cactus in a very cold climate. The plants will grow so much, that you will have to give away and compost lots of trimmings in a few years.

Never grow the plants indoors, because the deep shade in any house will stunt their growth, and make the plants too skinny, and they will be too sensitive to sunburn once they finally go outdoors. The best growth comes from sunshine, rain, and free root run. If you have a plant indoors, gradually get it used to the sun, and then plant it outdoors. If the growth is bad from growing indoors, the plant may collapse, and then grow back from the bottom. Just let it do this, our take a cutting, and the new plant will very quickly get a lot bigger than the mother plant.