Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Date: 2 Jun 2024 Top Tropicals Telegram channel & chat

How to attract more butterflies to your garden?

Monarch Butterfly

Milkweed

Odontonema

Giant Milkweed

How to attract more butterflies to your garden?

Attracting butterflies to your garden can be a fun and rewarding experience. Here are some tips to help you create a butterfly-friendly environment.

💐 Choose the right plants: butterflies are attracted to nectar-producing flowers such as odontonemas.
💐 Plant lots of bright flowers, especially of yellow and pink colors like some cassias which seem to be the pleasant to butterfly's eye.
💐 Use a variety of flowers to attract different species of butterflies. Check the list of butterfly-attracting tropical plants.
💐 Provide food for caterpillars: butterflies lay their eggs on specific host plants that caterpillars will eat. For example, monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed. Passion flower (Passiflora) and Aristolochia that we introduced earlier, are also great butterfly hosts, but be prepared to sacrifice some leaves!
💐 Provide a water source: butterflies need a source of water to drink from. A shallow dish or birdbath with rocks in it will provide a place for butterflies to rest and drink.
💐 Avoid using pesticides: they can harm butterflies and other beneficial insects. Try using natural methods to control pests in your garden.
💐 Create a sunny spot: butterflies love warm, sunny spots. Plant your butterfly garden in an area that receives at least six hours of direct sunlight each day.
💐 Add a butterfly house to provide shelter for butterflies during bad weather and at night.

📸 Milkweed, Odontonema, Giant Milkweed

🛒 Shop Butterfly Garden

#Butterfly_Plants

🏵 TopTropicals

Date: 2 Jun 2024 Top Tropicals Telegram channel & chat

What is a perfect shade tree with flower benefits? Discover the sunny Kassod Tree

🌻 What is a perfect shade tree with flower benefits? Discover the sunny Kassod Tree...

🟡 Cassia siamea - Kassod Tree (Siamese Senna) is a remarkable subtropical tree known for several special features:
🟡 Fast Growing, making it an excellent choice for quick shade and ornamental use.
🟡 Bright yellow flowers that bloom in clusters, adding a vibrant splash of color.
🟡 Evergreen foliage: lush green leaves year-round, providing continuous beauty and shade.
🟡 Hardy: highly resilient and can thrive in a variety of soil types and conditions, including poor soils and dry climates. Tolerates both light frost and summer heat.
🟡 Low maintenance, easy care, not messy, making it an ideal choice for both novice and experienced gardeners.
🟡 Nitrogen fixation: Improves soil fertility by fixing nitrogen, benefiting surrounding plants and enhancing garden productivity.
🟡 Medicinal use: herbal medicine (laxative properties and to treat various ailments).
🟡 Attracts bees, butterflies, and other pollinators, supporting local biodiversity and ecosystem health 🐞🐝
🟡 Shade provider: Ideal for creating shaded areas in gardens and landscapes, contributing to a cooler environment during hot weather.

🛒 Add shade and color to your garden with Kassod Tree

#Butterfly_Plants #Trees

🏵 TopTropicals

Date: 2 Jun 2024 Top Tropicals Telegram channel & chat

What is a perfect shade tree with flower benefits? Discover the sunny Kassod Tree

Cassia siamea - Kassod Tree (Siamese Senna)

🌻 What is a perfect shade tree with flower benefits? Discover the sunny Kassod Tree...

🟡 Cassia siamea - Kassod Tree (Siamese Senna) is a remarkable subtropical tree known for several special features:
🟡 Fast Growing, making it an excellent choice for quick shade and ornamental use.
🟡 Bright yellow flowers that bloom in clusters, adding a vibrant splash of color.
🟡 Evergreen foliage: lush green leaves year-round, providing continuous beauty and shade.
🟡 Hardy: highly resilient and can thrive in a variety of soil types and conditions, including poor soils and dry climates. Tolerates both light frost and summer heat.
🟡 Low maintenance, easy care, not messy, making it an ideal choice for both novice and experienced gardeners.
🟡 Nitrogen fixation: Improves soil fertility by fixing nitrogen, benefiting surrounding plants and enhancing garden productivity.
🟡 Medicinal use: herbal medicine (laxative properties and to treat various ailments).
🟡 Attracts bees, butterflies, and other pollinators, supporting local biodiversity and ecosystem health 🐞🐝
🟡 Shade provider: Ideal for creating shaded areas in gardens and landscapes, contributing to a cooler environment during hot weather.

🛒 Add shade and color to your garden with Kassod Tree

#Butterfly_Plants #Trees

🏵 TopTropicals

Date: 1 Jun 2024 Top Tropicals Telegram channel & chat

Macaron the Cat

🐱 Macaron (don't confuse with French President Macron!) doesn't watch TV news - it's his secret of relaxation and happiness.

Good night🌜

📸 😺 👇 Share your cats in comments!

🐾 More #PeopleCats in our Garden:
PeopleCats.Garden

🏵 TopTropicals

Top 5 favorite Mango varieties
and Top 10 Condo Mango trees

How to chose the right variety of a Mango tree?

Q: The most Frequently Asked Question about fruit trees: What is your favorite Mango variety? Which mango varieties are the best? Help me to make a choice!

A: As we mentioned on our Introduction to Mango Varieties page, there are thousands of named mango cultivars available. Similar to the classification of avocados (see our Avocado Variety Guide), mango trees can be selected based on your specific needs. These needs can include tree size and growth habit, disease resistance and hardiness, and most importantly, fruit characteristics such as taste, texture, size, color, storage ability, juice and sugar content.

We are currently working on a comprehensive Mango Variety Guide and will be sharing it with you soon. In the meantime, below are a few tips on selecting the right mango tree.
NOTE: all of the Mango varieties we offer are FIBERLESS!

Top 5 Favorite Mango we just love!

1. Alphonso - the best Indian cultivar in terms of sweetness and flavor. One of the rarest varieties and sought after - sweet large juice fruit. Coconut-like flavor.
2. Maha Chinook - Many consider it the best mango had ever tasted. Very rare mango variety from Singapore. This variety is semi-dwarf and great for pot culture. Nam Doc Mai close relative.
3. Fralan - Super reliable producer and hardy tree. Green fruit, sweet and juicy. Fralan means "Thunder" - as the fruit cracks when peeled.
4. Fruit Cocktail - Flavor is an amazing palette of different fruit, with citrus, pineapple, and guava notes.
5. Nam Doc Mai - It's not just us, everyone loves this Mango! The most popular variety: semi-dwarf and great for pot culture. Eaten green or ripe, a Thailand favorite. It is hands down the most sought after of the Asian mangoes and for good reason.

Top 10 Dwarf "Condo" Mango

1. Mallika - condo mango native to India. Among the best of the new generation of Indian dessert mangos. Intensely sweet, rich and highly aromatic flavor with hints of citrus and melon.
2. Ice Cream - far and away the most popular of the "condo mangoes." Flavored like the name. The tree can easily be maintained at a height of just six feet (!) making it ideal for container growing.
3. Julie - the most popular variety in Jamaica and many other Caribbean islands because of its rich, sweet, coconut/pineapple-like flavor. It is a dwarf cultivar, great for containers, but keep in mind it's very cold sensitive, don't plant it in the ground if you get freeze in winter.
4. Okrung - Thai compact cultivar, fruit eaten while green. The fruit is traditionally served in Thailand in combination with sticky rice. One of the most popular varieties in Thailand. The fruit is very sweet, with the highest sugar content.
5. Pickering - great for pot culture. It has a bushy, compact growth habit, and can be maintained in a container at just six feet (!). The fruit has a firm flesh with a fantastic coconut/mango flavor.
6. Nam Doc Mai - The most popular variety for pot culture, we already mentioned in our favorites above.
7. Cogshall - an ultra compact grower. Suitable for container growing on a balcony, or planting in a suburban backyard. It can easily be maintained at just eight feet tall, and it will still produce a good size crop year after year. The fruit is very colorful and has a mild, sweet flavor. It is also fungus resistant.
8. Carrie - the flavor is by far the most outstanding. It has absolutely no fiber and extremely rich in flavor, sweet, aromatic and a pure pleasure to eat. You will savor every mouthful! Its compact size makes it an excellent dooryard tree.
9. Diamond - It has a great taste very similar to Nam Doc Mai. Very compact, of a dwarf habit, great as condo mango.
10. Keitt - the best all-around late mango. It is very productive, good-flavored, and disease resistant. It also has a very long and late season. The compact tree is semi dwarf that bears 4-5 pound goliath fruit!

Photo above: Pim Seng Mun mango tree is a reliable and heavy producer.

Top 5 recommended vigorous growers and reliable producers

1. Glenn - Excellent eating quality, consistent production, and effortless to grow.
2. Pim Seng Mun - extremely productive mango.
3. Sweet Tart - New patented variety - exclusive offer.
4. Fruit Punch - Multi fruit flavor, delicious!
5. Orange Sherbet - One of the best new varieties for backyard growing. Flavor is sweet citrus-orange and less lemony than Lemon Meringue mango. The tree is moderately vigorous.

Top 5 exotic varieties for rare fruit collection

Now that you have decided to collect them all but have limited space, these are the top 5 of the most interesting rare cultivars:

1. Kar Lon Long - rare and unusual, native to India. Fruits that can weigh up to 5 lbs each! The unique flavor that has been described as being a cross between a mango and a pineapple.
2. Mun Kun Si - similar to Nam Doc Mai but much bigger. Rare variety, very popular among Thai and Vietnamese people. The fruit are extremely sweet, fiberless and somewhat crunchy ("Mun" means crunchy). Very late producer, fruit may still be on a tree as late as January.
3. Pina Colada - very sweet, has rich flavor with a hint of coconut and pineapple.
4. Ugly Betty - awesome mango, great sweet flavor, while the fruit is real ugly! Slightly mis-shaped at the top - hence the name.
5. Giselle - from Zill's breeding program and was a seedling of a mango called Tower. It was described as a juice mango and is named after Gary's wife.