Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

😍 I love today

"I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today." - Hodja Nasreddin

🐈📸 Bob the Cat, the Optimist of PeopleCats.Garden 
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🍒 The sweetest tropical cherry for your yard

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🛒 Plant Sweet Grumichama

#Food_Forest #Discover

🍒 What is the best tasting and most beautiful tropical cherry? Grumichama!

• 🍒 If you are hunting for a fruit tree that does it all - gorgeous looks, unbelievable flavor, and nonstop productivity - meet Grumichama (Eugenia brasiliensis), the tropical cherry you'll fall in love with!
• 🍒 Grumichama is a compact cherry tree that steals the show. In spring, the tree transforms into a cloud of delicate white starburst flowers, like fireworks frozen in bloom. The blossoms are pure white with long, golden-tipped stamens, giving them a soft, lacy glow. The entire tree hums with life - bees and butterflies swarm to sip the nectar, turning your garden into a pollinator paradise.
• 🍒 And then comes the fruit! The cherries are dark purple-black, glossy, and almost too juicy to believe. One bite and you're hooked- sweet, smooth, with hints of cherry, grape, and plum. It's our favorite tropical cherry at Top Tropicals, hands down. So good, you'll eat one - then a handful - and then realize you've picked half the tree. They're that good!
• 🍒 Grumichama tree is a dream come true for beginners. It tolerates heat, partial shade, even salt spray. It's drought-tough, yet grateful for a little water with a crazy fruit yield - up to 500 fruits per tree. And it's perfect container fruit, so even small-space gardeners in colder zones can grow it. Cold hardy to the upper 20s!
• 🍒 Even when not fruiting, Grumichama is a stunning ornamental. Shiny evergreen leaves, showy blooms, and a neat, upright form make it a standout in your landscape.
• 🍒 And the fruit? Packed with vitamin C, fiber, and even a bit of plant protein, it's a sweet treat that’s also healthy. Perfect fresh off the tree, or turned into jam or jelly - if you can stop eating them long enough.
• 🍒 Start your food forest with Grumichama. It's easy. It's beautiful. And it's the most addictive fruit!

🛒 Start your food forest with Grumichama

📚 Learn more:
Why grow Grumichama? Benefits of Brazilian Eugenia Tree - Cherry of the Tropics

#Food_Forest #Discover

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A flying bat with whiskers. Tacca. It's rare. It's weird.

• Tacca Lily - also known as the Black Bat Flower or Devil Flower, looks like something brewed up in a witch's greenhouse.
• The flower isn't really a single flower - it's a full-on performance. Giant black-maroon "wings" stretch out like a bat in flight, while long, drooping filaments dangle like eerie whiskers or jungle jewelry. Some can reach over a foot long!
• Those weird, wild filaments? They're not just for show - they are believed to help mimic the look of decaying matter to attract pollinators like flies. Creepy? Yes. Clever? Absolutely.
• The plant blooms best when it feels pampered - think filtered light, tropical vibes, and spa-level humidity. A smart indoor exotic for a bathroom with a skylight!
• It grows from a rhizome, and while the Black Tacca (T. chantrieri) is prized for its spooky looks, its Green cousin (T. leontopetaloides) is actually used to make a type of tropical arrowroot starch.
• Some gardeners say it takes a while to bloom (maybe a few months) - but once it does, it becomes the crown jewel of the greenhouse. People will ask if it's real. You'll say, "Yes, and it lives here!"
• Tacca comes in different species/colors: Black, White, Green:

Tacca nivea - White Tacca
Tacca chantrieri - Black Tacca
Tacca leontopetaloides - Green Tacca

📚 Learn more:

• ▫️ The rarest Green Tacca - Tacca leontopetaloides
• ▫️ When Bat Head Devil Flower is in bloom
• ▫️ Bat Head - Devil Flower

🛒 Shop Bat Head Lilies - Devil's Flower Tacca

#Nature_Wonders #Shade_Garden #Container_Garden #Fun_Facts

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A flying bat with whiskers?

Have you seen a flower like this? Find out from the next post!⤵️

Tacca Lily - also known as the Black Bat Flower or Devil Flower, looks like something brewed up in a witch's greenhouse.

🛒 Shop Bat Head Lilies - Devil's Flower Tacca

#Nature_Wonders #Shade_Garden #Container_Garden #Fun_Facts

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🐈 Conquer yourself

"The first and best victory is to conquer self." - Plato

🐈📸 Timo, Bob, Cash and Wesley on their virtual tour of conquering mice at PeopleCats.Garden 

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What Mango fruits year around? Xosi Tu Quy - Four Seasons crisp Vietnamese mango perfect green or ripe.
Mango Rainbow🌈

Xosi Tu Quy, Four‑Seasons, or Jin Huang, is a Vietnamese variety celebrated for its ability to flower and fruit multiple times annually. It produces medium-to-large, bright yellow, firm, fiber‑free fruit with a small seed and crisp, mildly sweet flesh. Ideal for green-eating and pickling, it also ripens to a gentle sweetness with floral-honey nuance. The tree grows vigorously with a dense canopy and shows good resistance to anthracnose - perfect for warm, humid, tropical or subtropical yards. In Florida it typically fruits May-August, possibly longer in ideal conditions.

🛒 Shop Mango varieties

📚 Previous posts: #Mango_Rainbow - varieties you should try

#Food_Forest #Mango #Mango_Rainbow

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💚 The fiery plant that fights sugar: Nature secret insulin?

• Costus igneus - Insulin Plant, also known as Fiery Costus or Spiral Flag, this vibrant tropical plant is famous for its potential health benefits - especially for people managing diabetes. Nicknamed the insulin plant, it's believed to help lower blood glucose levels naturally.
• Its lush, turmeric-like leaves spiral around upright stems, with a glossy dark green top and a striking light purple underside. The plant grows up to two feet tall and forms elegant clumps from underground rhizomes.
• In warm months, it produces bright orange, cone-like flowers that stand out beautifully in the garden.
• Beyond its beauty, the insulin plant is credited with aiding digestion, reducing cholesterol, boosting energy, improving skin health, supporting weight loss, relieving stress, and promoting heart wellness. A real botanical multitasker!

🛒 Grow your own sugar-fighter - order the Insulin Plant

📚 Learn more:
Most interesting edible gingers

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Shade_Garden #Fun_Facts

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➕ A single soul inhabiting two bodies

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." - Aristotle

🐈📸 Philemon and Sushi at PeopleCats.Garden 
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What avocado you can eat with the skin? Cold hardy Avocado Joey

• 🟢Prime picks for serious gardeners! Cold-hardy, creamy, and compact - Joey is a must-have for growers in cooler zones!
• 🟢Joey avocado is a cold-hardy, Type  B avocado with creamy, nutty flavor and purple-black skin. The fruit has smooth, thin, purple-black skin and rich, buttery, somewhat sweet flesh with a nutty flavor - perfect for slicing. The skin is so thin - you can eat it with skin!
• 🟢Discovered by Joey Ricers in Uvalde, Texas, Joey is a compact egg-shaped avocado that thrives even in cooler climates (surviving the teens to 20s F) and ripens from August to October. It survived temperatures around 10F near San Antonio, Texas (Zone 8b). Once established, the tree can take temperatures down to 15F for short period of time without significant damage.
• 🟢Growing into a dense, upright tree reaching 10-25 ft, it's self-pollinating but pairs well with a Type  A variety to boost yield
• 🟢Heavy bearer, Joey is a top choice for cooler subtropical regions and container gardens alike.

🛒  Shop Cold Hardy Avocados

📚Learn more:

• · Can I Grow Avocado Outside the Tropics?
• · Avocado Variety Guide
• · Posts about #Avocado

#Food_Forest #Avocado

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