As a cactus owner, dealing with a few little pricks here and there is just part of life. While the spiky and prickly bits look great on the plant, they can be a bit of a pain in the bum (sometimes literally) when they get in your skin, so we’ve made a handy guide to getting them out.
Tweezers. Get yourself a good pair of flat edged tweezers to pull out any visible pricks in your skin. If they’re a bit hard to see, you can hold your hand up to the light or use a magnifying glass. If you happen to sit on the floor in a skirt to pack cactus orders and end up with a prickly bum you might have to find, or make, a good friend to pull them out on your behalf (from experience!).
Sticky tape. Okay, so you were careful and put your sleeves over your hands before handling your cactus, but now your sweatshirt is covered in pricks, what can be done? Get some sticky tape, duct tape works best, stick it over the prickly bits and pull off as though you were waxing a moustache.
A pair of tights. This is one for the hairlike, shorter, less rigid spines. Get an old pair of nylon tights, ball them up and rub them over your skin to remove the tiny cactus pricks.
Glue. Do you remember doing craft projects at school when you were little, and how much fun it was to peel the dried glue off your hands afterwards? It’s also a great, and very satisfying, way to get little cactus pricks out of skin. Just apply a thin layer of PVA glue to the beprickled area, leave it to dry and then slowly peel it off.
Plantain poultice. We don’t mean the delicious banana-like fruit, but rather a plant that grows in abundance in the wild and in gardens all over England. If you get a cactus needle stuck deep inside your skin that needs a bit of extra help coming to the surface, you can apply a poultice of plantain to the skin and then pull it out with tweezers once it’s risen up a bit higher.
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