Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Information on new exotic fruit variety:
Artocarpus x integer (Jackfruit x Chempedak), Cheena cv. TopTropicals

FRESH SEEDS! Grow exotic Chempedak from seeds and you will have the trees for only $1 each!

Check out a short video of the opened fruit.

Cheena is a natural hybrid between jackfruit and chempedak. Comes true from seed. This highly recommended variety has grown in TopTropicals garden from a seedling of Cheena (Jackfruit x Chempedak) that fruited within 3 years from planting. The fruit (20-25" size) is probably the best we ever tasted! It is super sweet, crunchy and has a rich, pleasant, excellent flavor. It has very little latex which makes it easy to handle when cutting up. The tree produces at the very base of the trunk, so you can prune it as short as you want. Our tree survived light frosts as well as 48 hours of 3ft flooding, with no damage!
The tree has an open, low and spreading growth habit and can be maintained at a height and spread of 8 ft with annual pruning. It is very easy to grow and is not as cold hardy as we thought for a Jackfruit x Chempedak types of plants. The only two recommendations are - good fertilу soil with a high content of compost and regular watering.
Cheena is a consistent producer. The fruit is up to 5 lbs, long, narrow and uniform in size and shape. The skin is green, with blunt spines that yellow and open slightly upon maturity.

Check out Chempedak Cheena seeds - FRESH - FRESH - FRESH
Check out Chempedak Cheena plants - special offer $30 OFF!

How to get Passion Vine to flower?
From Mark Hooten, the Garden Whiz

Q: Several months ago, I purchased a passionflower vine, a red one with lots of flowers. I ended up putting it in a much larger pot with a large trellis, using a popularly advertised bagged potting soil recommended at a big box store. I have given it a blue colored water-soluble fertilizer every couple of weeks as recommended. However, while the vine seems very happy, growing faster than i can keep winding it around the trellis, it has not flowered all summer. I there something I am doing wrong?

A: Passionvines as a group (and there are some 500 different kinds!) are sort-of unusual among popularly grown ornamentals because they have "nitrogen issues". This is because, even though unrelated, they are much like most legumes, as they maintain a symbiotic relationship with certain beneficial soil bacteria which allows them to gather atmospheric nitrogen and store it in their roots. When they have an overabundance of nitrogen, they simply stop flowering and produce rampant leafy growth while never flowering. They only flower well after a period of healthy vine growth, because the plant had finally used up all of its stored nitrogen.
Since you had both used a bagged potting soil which likely already contained fertilizer with nitrogen added, as well as bi-monthly doses of a liquid fertilizer which also contains nitrogen, it has been receiving so much nitrogen it only knows to grow more vineage until the nitrogen is used up. If and when that happens, it will again begin to flower. This rule applies of course not only to flowering but also to fruiting varieties of Passiflora: the more flowers, the more fruit you get!
So the answer is - for the time being, just stop giving it supplemental fertilizer and it will start flowering for you sooner than later!

See all passion vines from TopTropicals.

Season Colors from Kristi, TopTropicals Flower Queen

Q: I live in New Jersey and I have a collection of potted tropical plants in my sun room. Our Fall season comes in bright colors, do you have something with colorful foliage for Fall?

A: For our northern customers it's almost time for the changing of the seasons. It is a very exciting and enjoyable time. The onset of fall means, less humidity, cooler nights and the Fall foliage. Here in Florida we do not get the chance to see the changing of the leaves, except maybe a few like Florida Maple Tree. So we use plants that mimic the season change, for all year round color! These are a few examples of the plants with colorful leaves that you may use for your Fall colors, plus remember - there is always a big list of Fall and Winter Flowering Tropicals!

Colorful tropical plants for Fall

Hibiscus tiliaceus - Variegated Mahoe
Acalypha wilkesiana - Chicago Brick Copper Leaf - see all acalyphas
Mussaenda philippica x flava - Calcutta Sunset Marmelade
Pseuderanthemum atropurpureum Purple Haze
Acer rubrum - Red Maple
Adenium Nil with red veined leaves
Cerbera x manghas hybrid - Enchanted Incense
Cordyline fruticosa Willies Gold - see all codyline
Graptophyllum pictum Chocolate Queen

See Fall and Winter Flowering Tropicals.