Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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A kitten like a rosebud. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

A kitten like a rosebud

Sushi the cat

Sushi the cat

😏 A kitten like a rosebud

"A kitten is in the animal world what a rosebud is in the garden." - Robert Southey

🐈📸 Sushi the cat, a couple weeks after she was born at TopTropicals Bfarm

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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Pineapple Guava: fragrant fruit, beautiful blooms, and real health benefits. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Pineapple Guava: fragrant fruit, beautiful blooms, and real health benefits

Pineapple Guava blooming

Pineapple Guava blooming

Pineapple guava fruit

Pineapple guava fruit

🍓 Pineapple Guava: fragrant fruit, beautiful blooms, and real health benefits
  • Feijoa sellowiana, also known as Pineapple Guava or Guavasteen, is an evergreen shrub or small tree that brings together beauty, fragrance, and edible rewards.
  • With its soft pink, edible flowers blooming in late spring and strongly scented fruit ripening in late summer to fall, it offers interest across multiple seasons.
  • The fruit is especially unique. When fresh fruit blended with a little sugar, many describe the flavor as forest strawberries with hints of mint or pineapple - some even say it reminds them of Juicy Fruit gum. The texture is smooth and slightly gritty, similar to a pear.
  • Nutritionally, Feijoa fruit is low in calories, high in fiber, and an excellent source of Vitamin C and antioxidants. You don’t need to guess when it's ready - the ripe fruit drops to the ground.
  • Pineapple Guava is easy to grow and adaptable. It tolerates drought, thrives in full sun or partial shade, and withstands heat as well as cold down to 10F. Whether planted in the ground or grown in a large patio container, it needs minimal care - just occasional watering and light feeding.
  • It also serves multiple purposes in the landscape: a dense, evergreen hedge for wind protection, a privacy screen, or a standalone ornamental that attracts birds and butterflies. It can be shaped into a small tree or kept compact depending on your space.
  • A beautiful, edible, and low-maintenance addition to the garden that earns its place year after year.


🛒Taste the fragrant forest-strawberry flavor - grow Pineapple Guava

📚 Learn more:

#Edible_Forest #Guava #Discover

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Plumeria pudica: the evergreen plumeria that never stops blooming. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Plumeria pudica: the evergreen plumeria that never stops blooming

Plumeria pudica

💐 Plumeria pudica: the evergreen plumeria that never stops blooming
  • 🌸 Also known as Bridal Bouquet, Plumeria pudica stands out from the rest with its lush, fiddle-shaped leaves that stay green year-round. Unlike typical plumerias that go bare in winter, this variety keeps its tropical charm in every season.
  • 🌸 It produces constant clusters of crisp white flowers with yellow centers - each about 3 inches across - giving the look of a fresh bouquet right on the plant. Whether in bloom or not, it's always ornamental.
  • 🌸 Its growth habit is just as versatile. Plumeria pudica can be shaped into a small tree or kept as a dense, clumping bush - ideal for patios, tight spaces, or tropical accents in the landscape.
  • 🌸 And the best part? It's low-maintenance. Fast-growing, drought-tolerant, and naturally resistant to pests and disease, this plumeria asks for very little and gives back a lot.
  • 🌸 We have in our collection very interesting variety of Plumeria pudica from Thailand. It has variegated leaves! Plumeria pudica variegata - Snow Bridal Bouquet, or White Arrow Leaf - has variegated leaf margins. Like regular Plumeria pudica, it is evergreen, never drops leaves, and grows into a beautiful, dense multi-stem bush. Great for container culture.


🛒 Add nonstop blooms and evergreen beauty to your garden

📚
Learn more:
Have you ever seen a Bridal Bouquet Plumeria this size?

#Container_Garden #Trees

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Ricki and Bob - always on top. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Ricki and Bob - always on top

Ricki and Bob the cats

⬆️ Ricki and Bob - always on top

"When you get to the top of the mountain, you can see the whole world." - Hodja Nasreddin

🐈📸 Ricki and Bob are on top of computer work at TopTropicals

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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Bright, bold, and edible: Variegated Chaya. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Bright, bold, and edible: Variegated Chaya

Leaves of Variegated Maya Spinach Tree

Leaves of Variegated Maya Spinach Tree

Variegated Maya Spinach Tree growing in pot

Variegated Maya Spinach Tree growing in pot

🌱 Bright, bold, and edible: Variegated Chaya
  • 🌿 Cnidoscolus aconitifolius variegatus, known as Chaya "Jatropha" or Variegated Maya Spinach Tree, is a rare gem for gardeners who crave both beauty and function. On top of health benefits of regular Chaya we mentioned earlier, this one is also a rare spectacular ornamental!
  • 🌿 With its striking, creamy-splashed fan-shaped leaves and sculptural form, this plant brings dramatic texture to sunny landscapes or large containers. And as a bonus, it sends up charming clusters of white flowers!
  • 🌿 More than just a looker, it's a productive perennial too - its leaves, once cooked, are a nutritious green similar to spinach. Just don't eat them raw.
  • 🌿 This drought-tolerant shrub thrives in sun, asks for little more than space to grow, and rewards you with year-round color and character. Whether you grow it for food, flair, or both, the Variegated Chaya is an unforgettable addition to your garden.


🛒 Add rare beauty and purpose to your garden

📚 Learn more:
Chaya's health benefits: a must-have tropical leafy vegetable for sustainable gardening

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Discover

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Get the Red Jade look without the fuss: cold-hardy Dwarf Red Jade Vine. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Get the Red Jade look without the fuss: cold-hardy Dwarf Red Jade Vine

Dwarf Red Jade Vine blooming

Dwarf Red Jade Vine blooming

Dwarf Red Jade Vine blooming

Dwarf Red Jade Vine blooming

💃 Get the Red Jade look without the fuss: cold-hardy Dwarf Red Jade Vine
  • 🔥 Love the stunning, fiery blooms of the famous Red Jade Vine (Mucuna benettii) but live outside the tropics?

  • Its cousin - Dwarf Red Jade Vine - is tougher, easier to grow, and just as jaw-dropping, and delivers the same dazzling display of blazing red flower chains - without the high-maintenance, ultra-tropical demands.
  • 🔥 Camptosema grandiflora - Dwarf Red Jade Vine, Cuitelo, or Rooster's Crest - this Brazilian superstar brings cascading chains of bright red blooms that look like flames frozen in mid-air.
  • 🔥 Unlike the ultra-tropical and finicky Mucuna benettii, this cousin is tougher, easier to grow, and just as jaw-dropping. It thrives in full to partial sun, forgives a little drought, and even shrugs off light frost. Blooming in fall and winter, it gives your garden a fiery finale when everything else starts to fade.
  • 🔥 Got a pergola or arbor? Perfect. The hanging flower clusters will light up the space like a botanical chandelier. Just prune it hard in spring and feed it well, and it will thank you with a blooming spectacle year after year.
  • 🔥 If you've been dreaming of the iconic Red Jade Vine but thought it was out of reach - this is your sign.


🛒 Get all the wow of Red Jade Vine - without the worry

📚 Learn more:
Camptosema grandiflora, Dwarf Red Jade Vine - my favorite plant

#Nature_Wonders #Hedges_with_benefits #Butterfly_Plants

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Bob is keeping the balance. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Bob is keeping the balance

Bob the cat

😰 Bob is keeping the balance

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." - Albert Einstein

🐈📸 Bob is always prepared! Even in his sleep at PeopleCats.Garden 

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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This is what we discovered inside Jackedak - the biggest fruit on earth! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

This is what we discovered inside Jackedak - the biggest fruit on earth!

Cheena - Jackfruit x Chempedak (Artocarpus x integer)

🍈 This is what we discovered inside Jackedak - the biggest fruit on earth!
  • 🍐Meet Jackedak - the superstar of the jackfruit world!
  • 🍐Originally grown from a seedling of Cheena (Jackfruit x Chempedak, Artocarpus x integer), this TopTropicals hybrid fruited in just 3 years and blew us away with its flavor.
  • 🍐Each massive fruit (20-25 inches!) is super sweet, crunchy, and rich, with hardly any latex - making it easy to prep and impossible to resist.
  • 🍐 Jackedak is also a garden hero: it fruits low on the trunk, so you can keep it short and tidy, and it's survived both light frost and 48 hours under 3 feet of floodwater during hurricane Irma in 2017, without breaking a sweat.
  • 🍐 If you want the best-tasting jackfruit hybrid we've ever tried, Jackedak is the one!


📚 Learn more from previous posts:

🛒 Buy Jackedak Cheena Tree - Delivered to Your Door

#Food_Forest #Jackfruit

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Have you seen a rare Golden Tulip Tree? A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Have you seen a rare Golden Tulip Tree?

Golden Tulip Tree

Golden Tulip Tree

Golden Tulip Tree

Golden Tulip Tree

Red Tulip Tree

Red Tulip Tree

Red Tulip Tree

Red Tulip Tree

🌷Have you seen a rare Golden Tulip Tree?

📸 More photos of Spathodea campanulata - African Tulip Tree - for the previous post.

🛒 Grow your tulips on a tree

#Nature_Wonders #Trees

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Tulips growing on a tree! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Tulips growing on a tree!

African Tulip Tree blooming

🌷Tulips growing on a tree!

🌷 Spathodea campanulata - African Tulip Tree - is in bloom at Top Tropicals Garden several times a year. We have both red and yellow varieties. Yellow is very rare! See more photos of Yellow Tulip Tree on our website and in the next post.

📚 Learn more:
Why everyone loves these tulips growing on a tree

🛒 Grow your tulips on a tree

Spathodea campanulata - African Tulip Tree, yellow flower #Nature_Wonders #Trees

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