Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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How many cats in the tree? A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Matilda's cat tree visitors at PeopleCats.Garden

😦 How many cats in the tree?

Three (don't forget the black tail with eyes upstairs)

🐈📸 Matilda's tree visitors at PeopleCats.Garden. 

#PeopleCats

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The sunny show-off hummingbirds love. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Caesalpinia mexicana - Mexican Bird of Paradise

🌞 The sunny show-off hummingbirds love
  • 🌞 Caesalpinia mexicana - Mexican Bird of Paradise - the sunny show-off you didn't know you needed. Many gardeners have popular and more common common Bird of Paradise Caesalpinia pulcherrima, with red flowers, but this one is rare in gardens.
  • 🌞 While most Bird of Paradise plants rely on looks alone, this one ups the game with fragrant blooms. From spring through summer, it's covered in butter-yellow flowers that stand out against soft, feathery foliage. Hummingbirds love it, and when the blooms fade, it makes woody seed pods that snap open like nature's fireworks.
  • 🌞 It's native to northern Mexico, which means it handles heat, sun, and dry conditions without a fuss. You can grow it as a compact shrub or let it stretch into a small tree. Either way, it’s easygoing, low-maintenance, and beautiful all season.


🛒 Attract hummingbirds to your garden

#Hedges_with_benefits #Butterfly_Plants

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Breakfast of Champions. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Breakfast of Champions
🐶 Breakfast of Champions

"Der Mensch ist, was er isst" - "Man is what he eats." - Ludwig Feuerbach, German philosopher, 1850

🐶📸 Sunshine and Mango, Top Tropicals Labradors, and their Papaya Tasting Table at Bfarm and PeopleCats.Garden. 

🛒 Explore Papaya varieties

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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Variegated Chaya - beauty meets nutrition. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Cnidoscolus aconitifolius variegatus - Variegated Chaya, Maya Spinach Tree

🌱 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:

#Food_Forest #Remedies

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If you can potty together, you're in for the long haul! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Cats Lily and Timo

🐱 If you can potty together, you're in for the long haul!

"Those who pee together stay together! If it's number 2 - it may be a rough relationship..." - Jamie McKinnon

🐈📸 Cats Lily and Timo are best friends at Top Tropicals PeopleCats.Garden. 

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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Climbing 10 feet for Vanilla Beans! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Vanilla Bean Orchid - Vanilla planifolia

⭐️ 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 produce your own vanilla: secrets of hand-pollination.

🛒 Climb toward your own beans

#Shade_Garden #Container_garden #Food_Forest

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The sun will rise. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Mr B the cat

Mr B the cat

🔥 The sun will rise

"Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise." - Victor Hugo

🐈📸 Mr B the cat at sunset at Top Tropicals PeopleCats.Garden. 

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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Homegrown coffee - the journey begins. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Coffee tree - Coffea arabica

☕️ 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:

#Food_Forest #Container_Garden #Shade_Garden

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