People of TopTropicals. Dog of the Year: Tilda, the Assistant Photographer

Today is a sad day. Our Editor and Photographer assistant Tilda left us for her last trip to Eternity... to the Dog's Paradise. For many years, Tilda has been helping Top Tropicals Editor and Plant Expert Marina Rybka to take pictures of beautiful plants from all over the world. We can often see Tilda's tail, paws, ears or eyes in many photos of our plant catalog. With Marina's and Tilda's help, our catalog today has 4900 tropical plant profiles with 53989 photos!
Tilda, you will always stay with us. You will follow us in every shot you made with your Mom. Thank you for being there for Marina and her TopTropicals. Thank you for making life of tropical gardeners happier! You made the difference. We love you forever.

TopTropicals PeopleCat Club and Zoo

Thank you for supporting us in helping PeopleCat Community!
Make your kind donation today and receive a surprise gift from us! Every little bit helps. Thank you and God bless you and your pets!

Meet People of TopTropicals. Pea Cock of the Day: the Orchid Guard

Recently we started to reveal the secret about who works behind the scenes on TopTropicals project; you have already met our editors and their assistants: Marina with Tilda, and Alex with Sonya. Today's story is about a Magic Peacock who works in orchid greenhouse of Eleanor Wilks - our photographer and tropical plant journalist in New Zealand and Australia. The watermark EleNZ you see on pictures of Australian flora - is Eleanor's!
Today Eleanor is sharing with us pictures of this amazing bird that helps her around her Orchidarium.
This young Pea Cock showed up one day in her backyard from nowhere and set up his living quarters in a tree. She asked around: no one was missing a peacock... so she took the Pea in and now he is in charge of her orchid collection. After a day of a hard work, Pea comes home to the back porch, waiting for Eleanor to sing him a good-night lullaby. Pea won't go to sleep until everyone in the house is ready for bed and the lights turned off. What a responsible house guard!

Check out and more Cat of the Day stories.

Meet PeopleCats of TopTropicals. Cat of the Day: Sonya, the Co-Author

In our previous newsletter, you met our editor/photographer tandem - Tilda & Marina. Today we introduce our columnist assistant - Sonya. For the past decade, this True Norwegian Forest Cat has been a great helper and inspirational co-author for Alexandra, TopTropicals website writer and social media blogger.

Alex has been with TopTropicals since Day One (2003). In 2011, she got Sonya, a 3-month old kitten that someone kicked out: at that young age she already had quite a temper of a real Wild Cat. No one wanted to adopt her and Sonya was doomed to suffer a street life... So Alex invited her in the house... and it took her many months to teach Sonya some good manners! And Sonya turned into a beautiful and affectionate Purrrson as well as became the Boss in the house (what a surprise, duh) and Alexandra's dearest life companion. Sonya also discovered her talent in writing plant stories for TopTropicals, sitting on Alex's shoulder and whispering into her ear while she is typing Sonya's horticultural tips. And when Alex stares at monitors for more than 5 hours, Sonya lays on her keyboard saying: "Now get up and get some stretch lady! Let's go re-pot some plants for a change!"

We will be following up on Sonya's creative work, and you will hear from her again soon...

Check out and more Cat of the Day stories.

Helping Citrus and other fruit trees with Nutritional Supplements

Q: Can you recommended a product to help with my citrus? Combating greening and chlorosis.

A: Citrus greening is spread by an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. The psyllid feeds on the stems and leaves of the trees, infecting the trees with the bacteria that causes citrus greening. Florida Citrus growers dedicated the last decade to researching citrus greening. Officially, currently there is still no cure, however, some Nutritional solutions have shown promising results. To slow the progression of citrus greening in infected trees, nutrients are applied to the leaves and to the roots. Providing better nutrition helps trees fight against citrus greening and enables them to continue to produce quality fruit.

We recommend the following products for use on regular basis:

SUNSHINE Epi is a natural Brassinosteroid plant hormone and a bio-stimulant that may be very effective as citrus greening treatment. It works through plant's immune system and shows amazing results of recovery of weak and sick plants.

SUNSHINE Superfood, a complex micro-element supplement, maintains plant's health and provides vigorous growth.

SUNSHINE-Honey is a basic nutritional complement, it contains essential plant micronutrients Boron (B) and Molybdenum (Mo). These elements are essential to vegetative and reproductive growth, cell expansion, tissue growth, and fertility. A very common problem for most unimproved garden soils is lack of Molybdenum and Boron as soil micro-component. This results in underdeveloped / low quality fruit and/or premature fruit drop. Applying SUNSHINE Honey on your fruit trees will fill that gap and help a fruit tree to form a healthy fruit.

Macro-nutrients should be applied in combination with micro-nutrients on regular basis:

Mango-Food - Smart Release Fruit Tree Booster (works great for all tropical fruit trees)
Fruit Festival Plant Food - Ideal blend designed to improve fruit trees health and vigor, and increase crop yield.

See SUNSHINE Boosters page for the complete list of plant boosters.