Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

🐾 Do pet repellers work? Here is your answer.

Product marketing line:

"Keep your pets off furniture painlessly with our pet repeller mat, deterring them with sound and texture, protecting your belongings."

Right.

🐈📸 Bob, James Coconuts, Scooby and Philemon testing new TopTropicals protective gear at PeopleCats.Garden. 

#PeopleCats

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🍓Strawberry Guava for best Margaritas - the easiest fruit tree you'll ever grow!

• 🍓 If you're looking for a cold-hardy tropical fruit tree that thrives on neglect, you’ve found it: Strawberry Guava, or Cattley Guava (Psidium littorale). It's our favorite Guava at Top Tropicals!
• 🍓 This fast-growing, evergreen small tree or dense bush doesn’t mind poor soil, limestone, or salt. It’s hardy to the low 20s F, drought-tolerant once established, and can even handle short-term flooding. Great as a hedge, windbreak, or container specimen, it also adds beauty year-round with glossy green leaves, peeling reddish bark, and soft red new growth.
• 🍓 You’ll get round, tangy-sweet fruit from spring through fall - perfect for snacking, jams, or jellies, juices, and adding to all kinds of drinks, especially Margaritas and Mojitos! 🍸
• 🍓 The red and yellow types are both tasty, with the yellow often a bit larger and sweeter. The sweetest and the most flavorful Cattley Guava variety is Hawaiian Gold - Psidium littorale var. Lucidum. This one is our favorite for eating out of hand!
• 🍓 Cattley Guava is productive, low-maintenance, and ornamental - one of the easiest tropical fruit trees to grow in poor or alkaline soils.

🛒 Add a sweet guava hedge to your yard

📚 Learn more:

• ▫️Favorite Guava fruit for eating fresh
• ▫️Top 10 fast-fruiting trees: #2. Cattley and Tropical guava
• ▫️How to always have lots of Guava Juice

#Food_Forest #Guava

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🐶 Squeaky little things

Sweet Memories: our Labrador puppies - Wigglebutts - 2.5 years ago!

🐈📸 Sunshine, Draco, Lila and their brothers and sisters in December 2022 at Top Tropicals Bfarm PeopleCats.Garden. 

#PeopleCats

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🍍What is the best pineapple to grow at home

• 🍍 Pineapple plants (Ananas comosus) are easy to grow, virtually carefree plants. You you plant a few - you will always have the benefit of fresh and delicious fruit on the table, full of health benefits.
• 🍍 White Jade Pineapple, also known as Eleuthera, is one of the most prized pineapple varieties you can grow at home - and for good reason. If you're only growing one pineapple, make it this one. And here is why:

✔️ Six reasons why you want to grow White Jade Pineapple

• 🟡Super sweet and low acid: White Jade has tender white flesh that's ultra-sweet with almost no acidity. The flavor is smooth and rich, far better than anything you'll find in a grocery store.
• 🟡Edible core: The core is soft, juicy, and 100% edible - no waste and no tough center.
• 🟡Spineless leaves: Unlike most pineapples, White Jade has soft, spineless leaves, making it much easier and safer to handle.
• 🟡Compact and container-friendly: It stays small, perfect for pots, patios, or tight garden spaces.
• 🟡Backyard hero, not for shipping: This variety bruises easily, so it's rarely seen in stores - but perfect for home gardeners who want top-tier taste.
• 🟡Tropical beauty + fast fruiting: With its blue-green foliage and striking fruit, it's ornamental as well as productive. Expect fruit in as little as 18-24 months with good care.

• 🍍 Although often mistaken as a Hawaiian variety, White Jade actually originated in Eleuthera, Bahamas. It thrives in warm climates and rewards gardeners with a sweet, low-acid treat unlike any commercial pineapple. It is grown in Hawaii now, especially by backyard gardeners and small farms, because it does so well there.
• 🍍 Make sure to feed your pineapple plants what they crave - sunshine and nutrients! Boost their growth with - SUNSHINE Ananas - Pineapple and Bromeliad Booster. This special formula gives your plants the energy they need to thrive and produce tons of sweet, juicy fruit just for you!

🛒 Plant the pineapple that grocery stores can’t sell

📚 Learn more:

• ▫️What are the best varieties of Pineapples?
• ▫️How we ate all pineapples from that ugly corner
• ▫️The most luscious Hospitality Fruit: Pineapple
• ▫️Three must-have fruit for every tropical garden

#Food_Forest #Container_Garden #Discover

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💳 Undocumented use of a hairbrush

"You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life." - Coco Chanel (and here is her Chanel No5 Tree, by the way)

🐈📸 Niki is making herself beautiful for a date at PeopleCats.Garden. 

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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🍒 Cocoplum: secret fruit in your hedge

• 🍒 Most people think Cocoplum is just a boring hedge plant: Bahamas Cocoplum (Chrysobalanus icaco). Thick, green, easy to trim - great for privacy. But hidden in all that greenery? Super-sweet plum-like fruit that are edible and very tasty! They look like small plums and come in pink, purple, or white when ripe.
• 🍒 Cocoplum is native to Florida and has been quietly feeding people for generations, long before it became a landscaping go-to. The fruit is mild, a little sweet, and great for snacking or making into jam.
• 🍒 Cocoplum isn't just a tasty surprise - it comes with some health perks too:

▫️Rich in antioxidants - especially anthocyanins, which give the purple fruit its color and help fight free radicals in the body.

• ▫️Good source of fiber - helps with digestion and keeping you full.
• ▫️Contains vitamin C - supports your immune system and skin health.
• ▫️Low in calories - great for snacking without guilt.
• ▫️So when you bite into a Cocoplum, you're not just tasting Florida - you're getting a little wellness boost too.

🍯 Quick Cocoplum Jam:

• 🔸2 cups ripe Cocoplums
• 🔸1 cup sugar
• 🔸1 cup water*
• 🔸1 tbsp lemon juice
• 🔸Mash it all up, cook on low 20-30 minutes until thick. Cool and enjoy!

*To make a delicious summer drink, add 10 cups of water and just get to boil. Let sit 2 hrs, mash up, drain fruit and cool to enjoy.

So next time you walk by a Cocoplum hedge, check for fruit. There might be a free snack waiting for you!

🛒 Get your edible hedge Cocoplum: privacy with perks

#Food_Forest #Recipes

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Crunchy Pate??? Sound ON! 📢

"I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. And chase the rider." - Dorothy Parker

⚠️ WARNING: sound effects 18+!
Marco at PeopleCats.Garden is eating his pate with a side of sound effects. Apparently, he ordered pate "extra crispy". Volume up for maximum crunch!

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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More than white: rare Butterfly Gingers

• If you’re a fan of that sweet, heady scent of the classic White Butterfly Ginger (Hedychium coronarium) - a symbol of Hawaiian paradise - you’ll be happy to know it has some beautiful, fragrant relatives!
• Hedychium coronarium - White Butterfly Ginger

This is the one everyone knows and loves. Big, white, butterfly-shaped blooms with an intense perfume. Grows in sun or shade, survives light freezes, and fills the summer air with scent. A must for Southern gardens and anyone who wants a piece of island paradise.
• Hedychium flavum x coccineum cv. Dr. Moy, Variegated Hardy Ginger Lily

A showstopper with variegated leaves splashed in creamy white, and peachy-orange fragrant flowers in late summer. This hybrid from Dr. Moy of the San Antonio Botanical Garden brings both bold foliage and beautiful scent. A real garden standout.
• Hedychium flavum x coronarium, Yellow Butterfly Ginger, Nardo Ginger Lily

Looks like the classic white, but with soft yellow blooms and the same rich fragrance. Long, slightly fuzzy green leaves and flower spikes that light up late summer with scent and color. This variety grow fast and much bigger than plant also much bigger and vigorous than classic white Butterfly ginger.

🛒 Smell the difference - get your ginger trio

#Shade_Garden #Perfume_Plants

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