How close should Opuntia be planted?
A. There are several ways to go about this, some commercial growers like to plant extremely close together, one foot between plants in wide rows about four feet wide, this would give sixteen plants in a four by four foot area. A very heavy planting indeed, at this close spacing the plants are difficult to grow to maturity, this planting scheme is well suited to single year growing of heavy fresh nopales gathering, with the plants being disked into the soil after a year or two, but yields per square yard can indeed be very heavy. We like to grow the plants larger mainly for large mature leaf harvesting, so we go with four feet between plants and five to six feet between rows.
