Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

⚡️What is a special effect of Lemon grass?

Besides its culinary uses, Lemon Grass is also known for its insect-repelling properties due to its citronella content. No more mosquitos! 😆

🛒 Order Lemon Grass

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts

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💐 What is the best flowering shrub for a shady spot?

• 🚩 Aphelandra is hands down one of the best solutions for a shade garden where you want to see more colors. It is a great addition to a collectible tropical butterfly garden, can grow into 4-5" tall bushy specimen. Tolerates both sun and shade.
• 🚩Aphelandras have beautiful lush foliage and showy, long terminal inflorescences throughout the warm season.
• 🚩These flowers are loved by hummingbirds.
• 🚩Aphelandra hartwegiana - Yellow Aphelandra. Yellow flowers emerge out of long orange stalks in the fall time. Pretty and unusual!
• 🚩Aphelandra squarrosa Dania (Snow White) - White Zebra Plant. It is also one of the best house plants, not only pretty because of its white-veined "Zebra" foliage, but also for the apical inflorescence with its beautiful yellow bracts.
• 🚩Aphelandra sinclairiana - Panama Queen, has extremely tropical look and fragrant flowers of unusual color combination: orange and pink.
• 🚩Aphelandra x panamensis - Scarlet Candle - a rare hybrid with bright red flowers

📚 Learn more from previous posts:
Panama Queen
How to grow Zebra in container?

🛒 Shop Aphelandras

#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits #Shade_Garden

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🐶 8 cute puppies update: wet dog fragrance!

Mango's puppies turned into big monsters! Lab Family reunion and the Country Bath... Visual definition of Happiness!

😶 Good night and sweet dreams about cute kittens and puppies...

Share your pets in comments!
📸 🐈🐈🐈👇

🐾 More #PeopleCats in our Garden:
PeopleCats.Garden 

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☕️ How to grow your own tea? Where does the tea come from? From Camellia!

• 🍃 Did you know that tea comes from a Camellia plant?

Camellia sinensis - Tea Leaf Tree - is the plant used to make all types of true tea: green, black, white, and oolong.
• 🍃Tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, after water.
• 🍃Green tea is rich in antioxidants, which help protect your cells from damage.
• 🍃Drinking tea can boost your immune system, help fight off infections, improve oral health by reducing the growth of bacteria.
• 🍃Regular tea consumption is linked to improved bone health and reduced risk of osteoporosis. It can aid in weight loss by boosting metabolism and help reduce the risk of heart disease.
• 🍃Tea contains caffeine, which can improve mental alertness and focus. On the other hand, tea contains L-theanine, an amino acid that promotes relaxation and reduces stress.
• 🍃The plant is very slow growing, can be grown in container or in the ground in frost-free areas. Takes sun to semi-shade.

📚 Instructions how to make tea from tea leaves (PDF)

🛒 Plant your own Tea Tree

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Recipes

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⚡️ #Fun_Facts: Why is it called Blue Butterfly?

Clerodendrum ugandense (Blue Butterfly): This plant's blue flowers and butterfly-like shape attract butterflies and other pollinators to the garden. So this plant is all about butterflies!

🛒 Order Blue Butterfly Bush

#Butterfly_Plants

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🏳️ "A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you." - Elbert Hubbard

😶 Good night...

Share your pets in comments!
📸 🐈🐈🐈👇

🐾 More #PeopleCats in our Garden:
PeopleCats.Garden 

#Quotes

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🌈 Mango Rainbow tasting table: what's the taste of that Mango variety?

We just had a mango tasting table of a few early and mid-season varieties and here is our impression:

• 🟠 Tommy Atkins (purple) - the earliest variety, sweet a juicy, but a bit fibrous. The fruit is super colorful! The tree is an excellent producer, vigorous and problem-free.
• 🟠 Haden (red) - a full sweet flavor, less fibrous than Tommy. Very colorful, large fruit.
• 🟠 Florigon (yellow-green, round) - completely fibreless, sweet and flavor is somewhat mild pineapple-like.
• 🟠 Baptiste (bright yellow) - very sweet, firm flesh, good flavor.
• 🟠 Val Carrie (green elongated) - reminds large Asian mangoes, with firm flesh, very sweet, fibreless and juicy. It is a cross between Valencia Pride (large fruit) and Carrie (excellent flavor). It took the best from its parents. Very aromatic flesh has no fiber at all.
• 🟠 Kent (large green-and-red) - excellent flavor, large size, and very little fiber. Eat before fruit gets too ripe.

❔ What Mango varieties have you tried this year?
Share in comments 👇

📝 See also earlier posts:

• 🔸 5 most Favorite Mango Varieties
• 🔸 Top 10 Dwarf "Condo" Mango
• 🔸 Top 5 vigorous growers and reliable producers
• 🔸 Top 5 exotic Mango varieties for rare fruit collection
• 🔸 How to grow a mango tree
• 🔸 How to protect mango fruit from rodents

🛒 Shop Mango Trees

#Food_Forest #Mango #Mango_Rainbow

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Use your yard instead of being used by your yard!

Tired of mowing a boring lawn? Get some colors in your yard and grow edible landscape!

Select useful, functional plants:
🌺 Spectacular Eye Candies

• 👉#Nature_Wonders

🌳 Hedges with Benefits

• 👉#Hedges_with_benefits

Butterfly Attractors

• 👉#Butterfly_Plants

🍒 Food Forest
👉#Food_Forest

Pick the right plants with TopTropicals free expert help.
At TopTropicals, we have 25 years experience growing rare tropical fruit trees and flowering plants.

Plants are the best therapists.
You can Grow Happiness - we can help.

💥 Still not a subscriber? Join TopTropicals community and you will know everything about tropical plants!

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🌈 How to add color to your yard.

• 🔜 Lovely Cassias we mentioned in earlier post are in full bloom today - they love the Summer Heat! They are our favorite Summer flowers.
• 🔜 Cassia (Senna) trees are compact, fast growing, tolerant to drought and poor soils, free-flowering and relatively cold hardy. Always a great choice!
• 🔜 Cassias come in several colors: yellow, orange, pink, red and rainbow.
• 🔜 Yellow-flowering cassias:

Senna surattensis (Cassia glauca) - Scrambled Egg Bush
Cassia siamea - Kassod Tree
Cassia didymobotrya - Popcorn Cassia
Senna alata - Empress Candles
Cassia occidentalis - Fedegoso, Coffee Senna
• 🔜 Pink/red and multi-color Rainbow cassias (which are hybrids between yellow and pink cassias):

Cassia grandis - Red Cassia
Cassia javanica - Apple Blossom Tree
Cassia marginata - Rainbow Shower Tree
Cassia roxburghii - Ceylon Senna
Cassia x nodosa - Pink Shower, Appleblossom.

❔ What cassias do you have in your garden?
Share photos in comments👇

🛒 Shop showy Cassia trees

#Butterfly_Plants #Trees

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❤️ "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." - Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

😶 Good night...

Share your beautiful cats in comments!
📸 🐈🐈🐈👇

🐾 More #PeopleCats in our Garden:
PeopleCats.Garden 

#Quotes

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