Garden Nations

Mediterranean Plants · Cactus The Prickly Pear: A Cactus With a Sea View Found on the cliffs of Tropea in Calabria – here's how this tough Mediterranean classic grows, what you can eat, and how to keep one in a colder climate. Walk along the coast in southern Italy and you will see them everywhere: big, flat, green "paddles" stacked on top of each other, growing out of rocks and dry slopes right above the sea. That's the prickly pear, or Opuntia ficus-indica – called fico d'India in Italy and Kaktusfeige in German. We took these photos in Tropea at the end of October. Even after a long, hot, dry summer, the plants looked healthy and strong. That says a lot about how well this cactus is made for tough conditions – and why it's becoming popular in gardens and on balconies far beyond the Mediterranean. What Is a Prickly Pear? The prickly pear is a cactus originally from Mexico. It arrived in Europe in the 1500s and spread so well around the Medi...

Agriculture · Around the World Liquid Gold: How the World Grows Its Olive Oil From the endless groves of Andalusia to Greek islands, Italian hills, Tunisian plains and Turkish coasts, the story behind the oil in your kitchen. Right now, from October to January, the olive harvest is in full swing around the Mediterranean. Nets are spread under the trees, branches are shaken, and mills run day and night turning fruit into oil. It's one of the oldest farming traditions on Earth, and it still feeds a global market of more than 3 million tonnes of oil every year. In the last few years, olive oil also became famous for a less happy reason: prices exploded . Many people in Germany and across Europe saw a bottle of extra virgin oil double in price almost overnight. In this guide: where olive oil comes from, who produces the most, why prices went crazy, how the harvest works, the main olive varieties, how to read a label, and whether you can grow an olive tree yourself in Centra...