Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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New Complete Guide to Avocado Varieties. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

New Complete Guide to Avocado Varieties

New Complete Guide to Avocado Varieties New Complete Guide to Avocado Varieties
New Complete Guide to Avocado Varieties. How to choose the right type of Avocado.
How many varieties of Avocado are there in cultivation? Did you know that there are hundreds of them? You probably thought there were only 2 kinds - black and green?

You may not realize is that this basic (but practical!) classification doesn't encompass all the wonderful qualities avocados have to offer.

There are numerous hybrids in cultivation, and once you plant your first tree and taste the REAL fruit (not from the grocery store), you'll be eager to explore other varieties. It's a guarantee! While it's true that avocado fruit can vary in "butter" content, most superior varieties are equally delicious.

This Avocado Variety Guide helps to choose the right variety for you. With its interactive tool, you can sort cultivars by fruit shape and quality, cold hardiness, origin, crop season, flower type A or B, tree habit and more.

🛒 Shop Avocado Varieties

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #How_to

🏵 TopTropicals

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What was discovered in the Pyramids: Pigeon Pea - an Ancient Superfood. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

What was discovered in the Pyramids: Pigeon Pea - an Ancient Superfood

Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea and Egyptian pyramids

Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea and Egyptian pyramids

Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea

Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea

Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea

Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea

Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea

Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea

What was discovered in the Pyramids: Pigeon Pea - an Ancient Superfood...
  • Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea - existed for more than 4800 year! It's been widely consumed in South Asia, South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Documented in India since 2,800 BC; reached Ancient Egypt around 2,200 BC.
  • Provides flavorful, nutritious, and healthy food, with potential to become widely popular like Japanese sushi 🍱
  • It is a showy perennial woody shrub or small tree, 4-8 ft tall, with soft leaves. Can be grown in container
  • Pretty flowers are yellow, with purple or red streaks, pods containing oval to round seeds.
  • Many culinary uses: the tasty and healthy beans used in rice dishes, soups, stews, tempeh, tofu. Unripe pods eaten in curries, leaves and young shoots cooked as a vegetable.
  • Rich source of fiber, protein, vitamins (B, C, E, K), and minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, zinc).
  • Medicinal value: various folk medicinal uses for sores, bladderstones, jaundice, skin irritations, bronchitis, coughs, pneumonia, toothache, dysentery, and more.
  • Everyone can grow it! The plant is super easy, tolerates poor soils, drought tolerant, improves soil quality like many other beans.


📚 Learn more about Pigeon Pea

🛒Grow your own Pigeon Pea Superfood

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Container_Garden #Fun_Facts

🏵 TopTropicals

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What is this spiny Hedgehog fruit and how does it taste? A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

What is this spiny Hedgehog fruit and how does it taste?

Annona montana - Mountain Soursop, Hedgehog Annona

Annona montana - Mountain Soursop, Hedgehog Annona

Annona montana - Mountain Soursop, Hedgehog Annona

Annona montana - Mountain Soursop, Hedgehog Annona

Annona montana - Mountain Soursop, Hedgehog Annona

What is this spiny Hedgehog fruit and how does it taste?

👀 This is one of the coolest looking tropical fruit!

Annona montana - Mountain Soursop or Hedgehog Annona. It is also called Wild Custard Apple, Guanabana de Monte, or Wild Soursop.
  • 📍 This fruit is prized for its deliciously sweet and tangy fruit, reminiscent of a blend between pineapple and strawberry. It tastes similar to regular Soursop (or Guanabana), with slightly milder flavor. The pulp is highly scented.
  • 📍 The fruit, up to a pound, has the most unusual looks! Just look at these curious Hedgehog spines!
  • 📍 The tree is medium sized, with beautiful, large, leathery dark green leaves that emit a strong aroma when crushed.
  • 📍 Mountain Soursop is much more cold hardy than the Soursop, established trees can take some frost, down to 24F when full grown.
  • 📍 Trees produce within just 2-3 years from seed, like many Annonas, and can happily grow and produce in a large container.


👨�‍👧 We guarantee that everyone who sees this fruit in your garden will ask for seeds even before they taste the fruit! And you will have lots of seeds to share because Mountain Soursop is very reliable producer with many seeds in each fruit.

🛒 Order Hedgehog Annona

📚 Learn more about Hedgehog Annona

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #Nature_Wonders

🏵 @TopTropicals

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Why exotic Mamey fruit is so much wanted? A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Why exotic Mamey fruit is so much wanted?

Pouteria sapota, Mamey Sapote

Pouteria sapota, Mamey Sapote

Pouteria sapota, Mamey Sapote

Pouteria sapota, Mamey Sapote

Pouteria sapota, Mamey Sapote

Pouteria sapota, Mamey Sapote

Pouteria sapota, Mamey Sapote

🍊 Why exotic Mamey fruit is so much wanted?

Pouteria sapota, or Mamey Sapote - is Cuban favorite. It is considered by Cubans to produce the best fruit in the world.

🍹 The fruit has delicious bright orange soft flesh, sweet and pumpkin-like in flavor. The Mamey fruit is eaten fresh, in milk shakes and ice cream.

👀 Mamey has a curious growth habit: flowers emerge in clusters in the axils of fallen leaves along the branches, followed by the showy fruit. This is called cauliflorous - plants that flower and fruit from their main stems or woody trunks. Other examples are Cucumber tree and Jaboticaba.

🌳 Mamey is a slow growing, compact tree, but needs some space to spread the branches. It normally grows 20 ft in height and 20 ft wide.

🛒 Order Mamey Tree

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #Nature_Wonders

🏵 TopTropicals

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Fun Facts: Cacao beans. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Fun Facts: Cacao beans

Cacao Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao)

Cacao Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao)

Cacao Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao)

Cacao Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao)

Cacao Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao)

Cacao Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao)

Cacao Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao)

Cacao Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao)

📖 Fun Facts: Cacao beans (Theobroma cacao) were used to make chocolate, and the ancient Maya and Aztec civilizations valued cacao beans as currency 💰 Can we use chocolate as money?
  • 🍫 Chocolate tree has large dark green leaves that shade the fruit pods which grow directly from the trunk and branches.
  • 🍫 The flesh of the fruit is eaten as a dessert, and the seeds are the raw material of chocolate. Hot chocolate can be made by drying the seeds, roasting, grinding, and adding milk.
  • 🍫 This exotic rare tree makes a gem of a houseplant collection.


🛒Get your own Chocolate Tree

#Fun_Facts #Food_Forest

JOIN 👉 @TopTropicals

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Why this Akee taste of deliciousness always follows me? A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Why this Akee taste of deliciousness always follows me?

Akee fruit, Ackee

Why this Akee taste of deliciousness always follows me? Definitely the favorite fruit (it's actually a vegetable).

Can't wait for the next crop this year 😼

📖 Fun Fact: Ackee is the national fruit of Jamaica and is a key ingredient in the traditional Jamaican dish, ackee and saltfish. However, it must be properly ripened and cooked due to its toxic properties when unripe.

‼️ Check out our previous post about Akee.

📚 More about Akee

🎥 YouTube Recipe: How to cook perfect Akee?

🛒 Grow your own Akee tree

#Food_Forest #Nature_Wonders #Recipes #Fun_Facts

🏵 TopTropicals

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What fruit contains 65 times more of vitamin C than an orange? Now you know - it's Barbados Cherry. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

What fruit contains 65 times more of vitamin C than an orange? Now you know - its Barbados Cherry

Barbados Cherry (Malpighia glabra)

🍒 What fruit contains 65 times more of vitamin C than an orange? Now you know - it's Barbados Cherry

Barbados Cherry (Malpighia glabra) fruit has a vitamin C content up to 65 times that of an orange! A single fruit contains the minimum daily recommended vitamin C requirements, as well as vitamins A, B1, B2, and B3, carotenoids and bioflavonoids - great antioxidants.

If you are looing for a compact, but fast growing tree with colorful fruit that starts fruiting right away - plant Barbados Cherry. It will also happily fruit in containers.

📚 Learn more about Barbados Cherry

🛒 Order Barbados Cherry Tree Online

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #Container_Garden

🏵 TopTropicals

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Fun Fact: Papayas contain an enzyme called papain, which is commonly used as a meat tenderizer, now you know what the secret is! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Fun Fact: Papayas contain an enzyme called papain, which is commonly used as a meat tenderizer, now you know what the secret is!

Papaya (Carica papaya)

Papaya (Carica papaya)

Papaya (Carica papaya)

Papaya (Carica papaya)

📖 Fun Fact: Papayas contain an enzyme called papain, which is commonly used as a meat tenderizer, now you know what the secret is!

Papaya (Carica papaya) is a delicious fruit that is good for you as a dessert or as a digestive aid. We eat it after every meal!

🛒 Shop Papaya trees

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts

🏵 TopTropicals

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How to get rid of a bad luck with the Garlic Vine? A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

How to get rid of a bad luck with the Garlic Vine?

Garlic vine (Mansoa alliacea)

Garlic vine (Mansoa alliacea)

👾 How to get rid of a bad luck with the Garlic Vine?
  • 🟣 Garlic vine (Mansoa alliacea) is one of the most wanted flowering tropical vines.
  • 🟣 When in full bloom, it looks like a cascade of blue-purple over a fence or trellis.
  • 🟣 The fun part is, crushed leaves smell like garlic, which will keep away the vampires and bad luck!
  • 🟣 Deep lavender flowers with white throat fading to a paler lavender within a few days, and you can see all three colors on the plant at the same time.
  • 🟣 Garlic vine has moderate growth rate and can stay compact in a pot as a specimen, and even can be grown as a house plant.


📚 Garlic vine: how to get rid of bad luck

🎥 Video: Garlic vine keeps away the vampires.

🛒 Get rid of bad luck by getting the Garlic Vine

#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits #Fun_Facts #How_to #Nature_Wonders

🏵 TopTropicals

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Why Dutchman's Pipe is the best butterfly attracting vine? Smell it! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Why Dutchmans Pipe is the best butterfly attracting vine? Smell it!

Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe

Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe

Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe

Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe

Why Dutchman's Pipe is the best butterfly attracting vine? Smell it!
Without any doubt, Aristolochia, or Dutchman's Pipe, is one of the best butterfly plants.
  • 🍃 Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe is celebrated for its unique and intricate flowers that resemble Dutch smoking pipes, hence its name.
  • 🍃Dutchman's Pipe flowers emit a scent mimicking decaying matter, which certain butterfly species, like the Pipevine Swallowtail, find irresistible 💩🙄
  • 🍃The butterflies lay their eggs on the plant, as it serves as a suitable host for their larvae, contributing to the plant's ecological significance by promoting pollination and biodiversity.
  • 🍃 As a result, it not only beautifies gardens but also supports local butterfly populations, enriching the ecosystem.
  • 🍃 Beyond its distinctive appearance, it's valued for its historical use in traditional medicine, particularly for its alleged healing properties.


🛒 Bring butterflies to your garden!

#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits #Fun_Facts

🏵 TopTropicals
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