🌞 What is your favorite Pineapple variety? A Sunshine State Delight: Florida Special!

• 🍍 One of our favorites here in Sunshine State is Pineapple Florida Special
• 🍍 Bred by the Libby fruit company for Florida's unique climate, the Florida Special Pineapple once thrived across 240 acres in Immokalee before Libby sold to Nestle.
• 🍍 This variety produces medium to large, golden-yellow fruits with a perfect balance of sweetness and tang. Known for its resilience, it can withstand temperatures down to the mid-30s without internal damage, making it a great choice for subtropical gardeners.
• 🍍The plant's compact size, reaching 2-3 feet, makes it perfect for containers, patios, or garden beds. Its spiny green leaves form a striking rosette, adding tropical flair to any space. Whether grown for its juicy fruit or ornamental appeal, the Florida Special brings a slice of paradise to your garden!
• 🍍 Enjoy it fresh, in smoothies, or as a tasty addition to tropical dishes.

📚 Learn more about pineapples from previous posts:
Three must-have fruit for every tropical garden
The most luscious Hospitality Fruit

🛒 Order Pineapple Florida Special

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🥰 Why Hog Plum is the most popular fruit tree after mango?

• 🍑 Spondias purpurea - Hog Plum, Mombin, Jocote, Ciruela... This fast-growing, spreading tree with thick branches is a favorite of tropical fruit lovers!
• 🍑 In spring, its showy, fragrant flowers bloom from bare, leafless branches in shades of red, purple, or yellow, hinting at the color of the fruit to come. The tree produces oval to round mildly sweet fruits, 1 to 2 ½ inches long, with waxy skin, juicy flesh, and a strong plum-like flavor.
• 🍑 Highly productive, the pleasant aroma of the ripe fruit can be smelled from many feet away!
• 🍑 The fruits are enjoyed fresh, stewed with sugar, or pickled while green for East Indian dishes. Mombin butter, made like apple butter, is especially delicious.
• 🍑 Even the young leaves can be cooked, though they carry a tangy, sour taste.
• 🍑 Deciduous and quick-growing, this tree can bear fruit before sprouting new leaves in spring. It thrives in many soil types and propagates easily from large cuttings, making it perfect for a living fence.
• 🍑 Very fast growing, and fruiting right away. Fruiting from May through July, the Hog Plum brings beauty, fragrance, and flavor to your edible landscape.

🛒 Plant Mombin Hog Plum

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🐰 What plant is a vine, a cactus, a tasty fruit, and a pretty flower at the same time? Barbados Gooseberry!

Perescia aculeata - Barbados Gooseberry is in full bloom all Fall through Winter, these flowers are so pretty!

📚 Learn more about this fruiting Cactus vine with pretty flowers and tasty fruit:
What is Barbados Gooseberry?

🛒 Plant Barbados Gooseberry

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😏 What fruit smells like roses? Rose apple!

• 🌹 If you liked the Java Plum (Jambolan) from our earlier post, its close relative is even more exciting, because the fruit smells like roses!
• 🌹 Syzygium jambos - Rose Apple - is a fragrant delight fruit! Also known as Malabar Plum or Pomme Rosa, the Rose Apple produces crisp, juicy fruits with a distinct rose scent, highly prized for jellies and confections.
• 🌹 This easy-to-grow plant is moderately cold-hardy and can tolerate poor soils.
• 🌹 Rose Apple trees are versatile – they make attractive, wide-spreading shade trees and can also thrive as compact, bushy fruiting plants in containers. Whether in the ground or a pot, this charming tree brings beauty and fragrance to any space!

🛒 Order Rose Apple

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🌳 How to get a large, bushy, exotic fruit tree in no time

*Meet the Divine Berry - Syzygium cumini - Jambolan, Java Plum

*Jambolan boasts fragrant white flowers in clusters at stem tips and produces purplish-black berries with sweet or mildly tangy flavors.

*These versatile fruits can be enjoyed raw or turned into tarts, sauces, and jams.

*Beyond its culinary use, Jambolan plays a role in folk medicine, with seeds, leaves, and bark used in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine.

*According to Hindu tradition, Rama survived on this fruit during his 14-year exile, earning it the title "fruit of the gods." Hindu mythology even describes Lord Krishna’s skin as the color of Jambul. The leaves are commonly used to decorate marriage pendals in India.

*This fast-growing, bushy tree isn't just for fruit lovers – it also makes a beautiful ornamental, forming dense privacy screens. The tree grows super fast - becoming a large, bushy screen in just two seasons, making it perfect for privacy or creating a dense ornamental barrier.

🎥 The tree on the video is only 3 years old!

🛒 Plant your own Jambolan

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🌷 Did you know that Tea has Camellia flowers?

• 🍃 Camellia sinensis - the Tea Leaf Tree - is used to make all true teas: green, black, white, and oolong.

🌱 Tea facts:

• · Tea is the world’s second most consumed drink, after water.
• · Green tea is packed with antioxidants that protect your cells.
• · Drinking tea boosts immunity, fights infections, and promotes oral health.
• · Regular tea drinking supports bone health, aids weight loss, and lowers heart disease risk.
• · Tea contains caffeine for focus and L-theanine to reduce stress.

🍃 The plant grows slowly and can thrive in containers or frost-free gardens with sun to semi-shade.

📚Learn more from previous posts:
How to grow your own tea?
Where does the tea come from?

🛒 Grow your own tea

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🎈 What does Blue Jaboticaba taste like?

• 🍇 Blue Jaboticaba - Myrciaria vexator - is full of fruit now! We enjoyed these delicious grape-like fruit.
• 🍇 Also known as Vexator or Blue Grape, this charming relative of the Jaboticaba is as delightful to look at as it is to taste.
• 🍇 It's a slow-growing, ornamental shrub or small tree that can reach up to 6 feet tall, with glossy leaves that add elegance to any garden.
• 🍇 The plant produces dark purple, almost bluish fruits with thin, sweet flesh surrounding one or two large seeds, offering a flavor reminiscent of sweet grapes. Fruiting in late spring or early fall, these delicious fruits are typically enjoyed fresh or used in refreshing drinks.
• 🍇 Though lesser-known in cultivation, Blue Jaboticaba can rival or even surpass the traditional Jaboticaba in fruit quality, with a single bush capable of producing several thousand fruits!
• 🍇 It's also tough enough to handle light frost once established, and its care needs are similar to those of Myrciaria cauliflora. Whether you grow it for its beauty or for its unique harvest, this plant is sure to charm with every season!

📚 Learn more from previous posts:
Blue Jaboticaba is different from regular Jaboticaba
What is Jaboticaba? I like the sound of this word!

🛒 Plant Blue Jaboticaba

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❓ What is Curry made of? 🍛

• 🌿 Murraya koenigii - Curry Leaf - is the Flavor Powerhouse!
• 🌿 Curry leaf, also known as curry patta, is a beloved ingredient in Indian kitchens, prized for its aromatic, oil-rich leaves.
• 🌿 These tiny green leaves bring a burst of flavor to dishes, often used fresh or quickly fried in butter or oil to unlock their full potential. In some recipes, they are toasted or oven-dried just before use for an extra punch.
• 🌿 Traditionally, curry leaves are enjoyed by diabetics in southern India for their health benefits.
• 🌿 The plant also graces you with small, fragrant white flowers, followed by showy purple fruit - making it as delightful to the nose as it is to the taste buds!

🛒 Grow your own Curry Leaf

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😍 How to make exotic Canistel Egg Fruit Custard - Recipe

Want to surprise your guests with an exotic tropical treat at your holiday dinner? Try this Canistel Egg Fruit Custard - a creamy dessert infused with the sweet richness of canistel, a dash of lime, and a hint of cinnamon!

• 
  📌 Ingredients:


3/4 cup ripe Canistel, mashed
3 eggs
2 1/4 cups milk (scalded)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. lime juice
1 tsp. cinnamon
• 
  📌 Directions:

1. Beat eggs lightly. Stir in sugar, fruit & lime, salt & cinnamon.
2. Add hot milk slowly, while stirring. Pour into buttered custard cups.
3. Set in pan of hot water about 1 inch deep.
4. Bake at 350F about 30-40 minutes, until custard is done.

And at last but not least, Canistel is a sweet treat: Canistel Custard!

📚 Learn more about Canistel Egg Fruit
10 Health Benefits of Canistel Fruit
Pouteria campechiana - Canistel, the curious heart-shaped Egg Super-Fruit

🛒 Order Canistel Egg Fruit Tree

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⭐️ Why is it called Star Apple?

• 🍏 Caimito Star Apple (Chrysophyllum cainito) - do not confuse with Start Fruit (Carambola) - is hard to find exotic fruit tree.
• 🍏 It is a favorite in the Caribbean and Central America as well as Southeast Asia.
• 🍏 The fruit has a mild grape-like flavor, and is best eaten fresh.
• 🍏 Inside the fruit looks like a star when cut across!

🛒 Plants Caimito Star Apple

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