Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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An heirloom holiday cactus lost for decades: Thanksgiving-to-Easter bloomer. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

An heirloom holiday cactus lost for decades: Thanksgiving-to-Easter bloomer

An heirloom holiday cactus lost for decades: Thanksgiving-to-Easter bloomer
🌸 An heirloom holiday cactus lost for decades: Thanksgiving-to-Easter bloomer

  • 🌸 Schlumbergera x New Deal is not your regular Christmas cactus. This is a true heirloom, a variety that vanished from the trade for decades and originally appeared at a rare plant sale at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden back on November 8, 1932 - the same day F.D.R. won the presidency and launched the famous New Deal. The name stuck, and so did the plant’s reputation! us

  • 🌸 What makes New Deal special? First, the flowers. They are big - about an inch larger than standard holiday cactus blooms – and show up in brilliant violet-pink and white. Second, this variety blooms twice a year, which is why people call it a Thanksgiving-to-Easter cactus. It usually opens a full flush around Thanksgiving and Christmas, then surprises you with a second wave toward spring.

  • 🌸 Despite its pedigree, New Deal is easy to grow. It handles normal houseplant conditions, stays compact, and rewards even casual care with heavy blooming.

  • 🌸 The plants available today come from 3rd-generation cuttings of an original specimen that's still alive, making this one of the rarest and most authentic holiday cactus cultivars you can add to your collection. A living piece of history - and one of the most generous bloomers for the holiday season!


🛒 Get your own vintage Christmas cactus with a history

#Container_Garden #Shade_Garden #Nature_Wonders

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🎃 Thanksgiving Weekend Deal

Schlumbergera x New Deal - Thanksgiving, Christmas Orchid Cactus, plant covered in cascading bright pink flowers indoors.

Photo above: A long-blooming holiday classic, Schlumbergera New Deal, an heirloom Thanksgiving-to-Christmas cactus with cascades of oversized pink flowers. Blooms from Thanksgiving through Easter!

As our way of saying thank you for growing with us all year long, here is your exclusive holiday code. Use it for 15% off any order over $100 (excluding shipping and handling):

THANKS2025

Ends November 30th, 2025 (Sunday) at midnight.
Min order $100 (exculuding S/H).
One use per customer.
Cannot be combined with other discounts.
Cannot be applied to previous orders.

Check out our specials below - hand-picked by our horticulturist for size, beauty, and vigor! These are the biggest, fullest plants you'll see all year! Take advantage of this Holiday discount code and get them now at their best and fullest point!

🛒 Shop Tropical plants

Gloxinia sylvatica - Bolivian Sunset, close-up of a flowering plant with many bright red tubular blooms and dark green leaves.

Gloxinia sylvatica - Bolivian Sunset. A perfect fall-winter standout: it bursts with glowing blooms and makes a great holiday gift as a flowering start.

Large blooming Gardenia nitida plant with many white star-shaped flowers and glossy green leaves growing in a container

Gardenia nitida, Shooting Star: a rare African gardenia with sweet fragrance and star-shaped blooms that appear several times a year. Soft diamond-shaped leaves. This true collectors gem blooms in dramatic waves, filling the air with a strong, sweet scent.

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Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Top Tropicals!

Smokey the tuxedo cat holding a Thanksgiving sign while Sunshine the ginger tabby smiles beside him on a potting table.

Smokey: "We made a list of everything we are thankful for this year."
Sunshine: "I helped. Mostly by napping next to it."
Smokey: "And that is exactly why sunshine naps are on the list."

Smokey and Sunshine wanted to share a short Gardener Thanksgiving Message about what they are thankful for this year:

"We are thankful for warm laps during cold mornings.
Thankful for every gardener who stopped to scratch our heads between loading carts.
Thankful for the smell of fresh soil, new plants, and boxes that make perfect cat forts.
Thankful for mango season (even though humans never let us eat the fruit).
Thankful for sunshine naps on potting tables and shade naps under benches.
Thankful for all the tiny moments when gardens and people slow down together.
And thankful that we get to share this tropical adventure with you."

From the whole Top Tropicals Team and PeopleCats, we wish you a warm, peaceful, plant-filled Thanksgiving 🙏 ♥️

🛒 Shop Tropical plants

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Eat dessert first. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Eat dessert first

Eat dessert first
Eat dessert first

"Life is short. Eat dessert first." - Ernestine Ulmer

🐈📸 Cat Cash is tasting Barbados Cherry with attitude, at TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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Do this if you want to smell a dizzy perfume! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Do this if you want to smell a dizzy perfume!

Night blooming jasmine, Cestrum nocturnum

✨ Do this if you want to smell a dizzy perfume!
  • ⭐️ Night blooming jasmine, Cestrum nocturnum, is one of those plants people get obsessed with once they smell it. The fragrance doesn’t play around - the tiny flowers open after dark and fill the whole yard with a sweet, powerful, almost dizzy perfume. You want some serious fragrance? Do this: get yourself a night blooming jasmine!
  • ⭐️ The crazy part? It’s in the Nightshade family, related to tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers. But it acts nothing like a veggie. This shrub grows fast, stays dense, and turns into a nighttime perfume machine during warm months.
  • ⭐️ Flowers are pale yellow to white and stay insanely fragrant until sunrise. In India and across South Asia they use them for weddings, ceremonies, and perfumery because the scent is that intense.
  • ⭐️ If you want the full effect, plant it near a window, a porch, or a walkway. Anywhere you pass by at night. One or two plants are enough to make your whole garden smell like romance after dark!


🛒 Make your yard smell like romance!

📚 Learn more:
📱 How to grow Night Blooming jasmine

#Perfume_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits

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Ackee skillet scramble: quick-n-fun exotic recipes. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Ackee skillet scramble: quick-n-fun exotic recipes

Ackee skillet scramble

Ackee skillet scramble

Akee (Ackee) tree (Blighia sapida), fruit on a tree

Akee (Ackee) tree (Blighia sapida), fruit on a tree

Akee (Ackee) tree (Blighia sapida), fruit close up

Akee (Ackee) tree (Blighia sapida), fruit close up

🍴 Ackee skillet scramble: quick-n-fun exotic recipes
  • 🔴Boil ripe, naturally opened Ackee pieces for a few minutes until tender, then drain well.
  • 🔴Saute chopped onion and a few tomato bits in a little oil until soft.
  • 🔴Add cooked salted cod (or skip it) and gently fold in the cooked ackee.
  • 🔴Warm it through on low heat and serve as a soft, creamy tropical scramble.


🛒 Plant Ackee tree and harvest fruit you can't get from the store!

📚 Learn more:
📱 What is Akee - Jamaica's National Fruit - and how to grow it
📱 How to cook perfect Akee?

#Food_Forest #Recipes

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Watch this Penguin Cat watching penguins. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Watch this Penguin Cat watching penguins

Matilda the Penguin-shaped Cat is catching penguins

😏 Watch this Penguin Cat watching penguins

"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." - Will Rogers

🐈📸 Matilda, the Penguin-shaped Cat is learning new things at TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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What Avocado is better - Type A or Type B? A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

What Avocado is better - Type A or Type B?

Avocado tree flowers

Avocado tree flowers

What Avocado is better - Type A or Type B?

Avocados are divided into two types based on how their flowers open - Type A and Type B. This has nothing to do with how the fruit looks, only with how the flowers work.

TYPE A:
The flowers open as female in the morning of the first day, then close. On the afternoon of the second day, they reopen as male.

The most popular type A avocado varieties:
Bernecker, Black Prince, Catalina, Choquette, Day, Donnie (Doni), Fantastic, Florida Hass (Haas), Lila (Opal), Loretta, Lula, Mexicola, Mexicola Grande, Red Russell, Reed, Russell, Simmonds, Ulala (Oh La La, Super Hass) , Waldin, Wurtz (Dual Type, A&B).

TYPE B:
The flowers open as female in the afternoon of the first day, then close. The next morning, they reopen as male.

The most popular type B avocado varieties:
Anise, Bacon, Beta, Booth 8, Brazos Belle (Wilma), Brogdon (Brogden), Buck, Ettinger, Fuerte, Hall, Hardee Red, Hialeah Red, Joey, Kampong (Sushi), Marcus Pumpkin, Maria Black, Miguel, Monroe, Nishikawa, Oro Negro, Pollock, Poncho (Pancho), Thomson Red, Tonnage, Winter Mexican, Wurtz (Dual Type, A&B), Yamagata.
  • 🟢 Each tree can make its own fruit (it’s self-fertile), but if you plant both types together, they will help each other make more fruit. The flowers of A and B types open at opposite times, so bees can carry pollen between them more easily. This means better pollination and a bigger harvest.
  • 🟢 For home gardeners, one tree is enough to get fruit, but having both A and B types nearby will give you a larger crop. If you grow avocados in pots, it’s a good idea to have at least one of each type.


✍️ In short:
One tree = some fruit
Two trees (A + B) = lots more fruit!

✔ ️Check out Avocado Variety Guide interactive chart. Sort them by flower type A or B, tree habit, fruit shape and quality, cold hardiness, origin, season and more!

🛒  Explore Avocado varieties

📖Our Book: Avocado Variety Guide, Snack or Guacamole?
Hard copy
PDF File Download

📚Learn more:
How Avocado trees flower and set fruit
Avocado Variety Guide
#Avocado #Food_Forest #How_to


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The Tropical Cat. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

The Tropical Cat

Google the Cat

Google the Cat

💐 The Tropical Cat

"Man is what he believes." - Anton Chekhov

🐈📸 Google the Cat with tropical flowers he grows at TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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One fruit on this tray always stumps people. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

One fruit on this tray always stumps people

Tropical fruit on a tray

One fruit on this tray always stumps people
  • 🍉 Another day, another fruit tray from the garden! Even at the end of November, something is always ripening here in Florida. This tray turned out especially fun - a mix of familiar fruits and a couple that always make people guess twice!
  • 🍉 Today’s harvest includes: sweet Persimmons, Star fruit, a few different dragon fruits: yellow Palora and white with red skin - this is Seoul Kitchen. There's also Cocoplum, which makes great drinks. And - ta-da! - the little showstopper of the day: Curly Locks Orchid Cactus fruit (Epiphyllum guatemalense Monstrosa). It looks wild, but it's edible and tastes like a tiny dragon fruit.
  • 🍉 If you live in Florida or any warm climate, growing your own fruit is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. Tropical fruit trees are generous plants - they don’t wait for a season, they give you something month after month. Some days it’s a handful, some days it’s a whole tray, but there’s always a fresh treat waiting. Once you start growing your own food, you realize how easy and rewarding it is to fill your garden with flavor.
  • 🍉 Every tray has a new surprise. Come along and see what the garden gives us next!


🛒 Explore rare tropical fruit

📚 Learn more:

#Food_Forest #Discover

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