Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

🍴 Papaya lime smoothie: Quick-n-Fun exotic recipes

• 
  🟢Blend ripe papaya with fresh lime juice, a splash of coconut water, and ice.
• 🟢Super refreshing and naturally creamy, no dairy needed.

🛒 Pick a perfect Papaya variety for your yard

#Food_Forest #Recipes #Papaya

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🍨 Before eating ice cream, try this fruit growing on a house plant!

• 🍨 Most people know Swiss Cheese Plant - Monstera deliciosa - for its big holey leaves, but here’s the wild part: this jungle climber also makes fruit. Real fruit. And it tastes like pineapple mixed with ice cream.
• 🍨 Have you tried Monstera fruit? Will you eat it again?
• 🍨 This plant grows in the rainforests of Mexico and Guatemala, where young seedlings crawl toward the shade until they find a tree to climb. Yes, they grow in the direction of the darkest area, not just merely away from light. Interesting, ah?
• 🍨 In time, it sends out a green, cone-like fruit nearly a foot long. It takes a while to ripen - about a year - and only when the scales start to lift can you peel them back and find the creamy pulp inside. Ice-cream sweet and tropical.
• 🍨 One catch though: never eat the fruit unripe. The pulp contains oxalic acid that is generally harmless but will burn your mouth. Best trick is to let it wrinkle a little, wrap it up, and wait until the scales loosen on their own. Then it's ready.
• 🍨 And for collectors? The Thai Constellation, with its cream-splashed leaves, is the crown jewel. Some specimens sell for thousands. Not bad for a "Swiss Cheese Plant"!

🛒 Shop Monstera plants

📚 Learn more:
How to harvest and eat Monstera Ice Cream

#Food_Forest #Container_Garden #Shade_Garden

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🍴 Katuk egg stir-fry: Quick-n-Fun exotic recipes

• 
  🟢Saute chopped Katuk leaves (Sauropus androgynus) with garlic and a touch of soy sauce
• 🟢Shen scramble in eggs.
• 🟢Fast, simple, healthy, and full of flavor!

🛒 Add healthy Katuk to your perennial vegetable garden

#Food_Forest #Recipes

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🍴 Mango chili salt bites: Quick-n-Fun exotic recipes

• 🟡Slice ripe mango into wedges.
• 🟡Sprinkle lightly with chili powder, salt, and a squeeze of lime.
• 🟡Sweet, spicy, salty, tangy - all in one bite!

🛒 Explore Mango varieties

#Food_Forest #Recipes #Mango

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🍒 One bite, your whole day of vitamin C: Barbados Cherry that outdoes oranges!

• 🍒 Malpighia glabra - Barbados Cherry, or Acerola has 65 times more vitamin C than an orange! Just a single berry-sized fruit can provide your entire daily vitamin C needs, along with vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, carotenoids, and bioflavonoids. In short, this little cherry is one of the most powerful antioxidant fruits in the world.
• 🍒 But it isn’t just about nutrition. Barbados Cherry is a compact, fast-growing shrub or small tree that starts fruiting young, often within its first year. It produces crops several times a year, and the bright red cherries are as beautiful as they are useful. The fruit is tangy-sweet and makes excellent juices, smoothies, jams, and jellies. It also freezes well without losing its vitamin content.
• 🍒 Gardeners love this plant not only for its fruit but also for how easy it is to grow. Unlike many tropicals, it tolerates alkaline soils, is drought-resistant once established, and can handle light freezes. That makes it a surprisingly tough choice for a tropical fruit tree. Birds enjoy the fruit too, so planting one is also a gift to your local wildlife.
• 🍒 It's also a beauty in the garden, covered in pretty pink flowers and bright red fruit, often both at the same time.
• 🍒 If you are short on space, the dwarf variety Nana is a perfect choice. With tiny leaves, compact growth, and smaller fruit, it works well in containers, borders, or even as a bonsai. It's both ornamental and productive.
• 🍒 Whether you want a reliable vitamin boost, a wildlife-friendly garden addition, or just a cheerful little tree with bright red fruit, Barbados Cherry has you covered.

📚 Learn more from previous posts:

• ▫️Top 10 fast-fruiting trees: #4. Barbados Cherry
• ▫️10 best fruit trees to grow in Florida and Southern landscapes
• ▫️Another crop of Barbados cherry
• ▫️How to make Barbados Cherry Juice
• ▫️Barbados Cherry Mini Version.
• ▫️65 times more of vitamin C than an orange: Barbados Cherry
• ▫️Learn more about Barbados Cherry

🛒 Add this vitamin C tree to your garden

#Food_Forest #Discover #Remedies

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🍴 Avocado cacao mousse: Quick-n-Fun exotic recipes

• 🟢Blend ripe avocado with cocoa powder, honey, and a splash of vanilla.
• 🟢Chill and serve like chocolate pudding.
• 🟢Nobody will guess the secret ingredient!
• 🟢Healthy and tasty!

🛒 For all-home-grown ingredients you will need:
Avocado tree fruit
Chocolate tree fruit
Vanilla Orchid Beans

#Food_Forest #Recipes #Avocado

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You won't believe what was hiding inside this Siamese twin Valencia Pride mango!
Mango Rainbow🌈

From our Valencia Pride tree that you saw in earlier video came this giant double mango - two fruits fused into one! On the outside it looked bizarre, but the real surprise came when we cut it open. Want to see what a twin mango looks like inside? Watch the video and find out!

🛒 Shop Mango varieties

📚 Previous posts: #Mango_Rainbow - varieties you should try

#Food_Forest #Mango #Mango_Rainbow

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🌱 Variegated Chaya - beauty meets nutrition

• 🌿 Variegated Chaya - Variegated Maya Spinach Tree or Cnidoscolus aconitifolius variegatus - is a showstopper in the edible garden. Its heavily cut, creamy-white variegated leaves look like they belong in a tropical ornamental bed, but this beauty is also a powerhouse leafy green.
• 🌿 Native to the Yucatan Peninsula, Chaya has been a traditional food for centuries. Younger leaves (and a little stem) are cooked like spinach, simmered for at least 5-15 minutes to neutralize toxins, then served with butter, oil, or in soups. Once cooked, they’re loaded with protein, calcium, iron, and vitamins A and C - a true garden superfood.
• 🌿 Fast-growing and low-maintenance, Chaya can reach 6-8 feet and thrives in full sun or partial shade. It's drought-tolerant, attracts butterflies and hummingbirds with its white flowers, and grows easily from cuttings. Perfect for food forests, permaculture gardens, or anyone wanting beauty and function in one plant.

🛒 Plant it, cook it, love it

📚 Learn more:

• ▫️Bright, bold, and edible: Variegated Chaya
• ▫️Chaya's health benefits: a must-have tropical leafy vegetable for sustainable gardening

#Food_Forest #Remedies

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⭐️ Climbing 10 feet… for Vanilla Beans!

• ⚡️ One of our Vanilla Bean Orchids at TopTropicals has big ambitions - it's already climbed 10 feet up a pine tree! We’re waiting (impatiently!) for those elegant yellow-green flowers, which will hopefully turn into vanilla beans.
• ⚡️ Vanilla Bean Orchid (Vanilla planifolia) is the plant behind that sweet, comforting vanilla flavor we all love. It starts off like any potted orchid, but soon sends out aerial roots and becomes a climber, wrapping itself around trees or trellises. In its natural habitat, it grows high into forest canopies, but in the garden it will happily scale any sturdy support you give it.
• ⚡️ Once established, it flowers and sets the long green pods we call vanilla beans. Growing your own is a lesson in patience - from flower to dried bean can take month - but nothing beats harvesting your own vanilla for the kitchen.

📚 Learn more:

• ▫️How to properly plant Vanilla Orchid
• ▫️How to grow your own vanilla orchid at home
• ▫️The Secret of how to Make Vanilla Orchid bloom
• ▫️The biggest in the world Vanilla dilloniana

📱How to produce your own vanilla: secrets of hand-pollination.

🛒 Climb toward your own beans

#Shade_Garden #Container_garden #Food_Forest

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☕️ Homegrown coffee - the journey begins!

Coffee trees (Coffea arabica) that you saw blooming at Top Tropicals in May with fragrant, gardenia-like flowers, now in August - they are loaded with fruit! We will update on them once they turn red and ripe...

🛒 Start your own coffee harvest

📚 Learn more:

• • How to make your own coffee from homegrown beans
• • Coffee trees in bloom
• • Brew Your Future: Grow Your Own Coffee
• • What is coffee made of?
• • Why Coffee tree is the best gift plant
• • Top 10 fruit you'll ever need for your health benefits: #2. Coffee Tree
• • What is the most popular and the easiest tropical fruit tree grown as a house plant?
• • Video: growing a Coffee tree

#Food_Forest #Container_Garden #Shade_Garden

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