Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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Adenium care

adenium desert rose flowers and plants in pots showing pink, red, purple, and bicolor blooms.

Care for adeniums is simple once you understand what they like. Think of them as half succulent, half tropical shrub. Keep their roots dry but never bone-dry, give them sun, and feed them during the warm months. Do that, and they will reward you with fat trunks and nonstop flowers.

  • Soil and pot: Use a gritty, fast-draining Adenium Soilless Mix. Shallow wide pots work best — they let the caudex spread and show off its shape like a bonsai.
  • Watering: Water in the morning. Let the surface dry before watering again. Never let pots sit in saucers of water.
  • Foliage: Keep leaves dry. Wet leaves invite rot and fungus.
  • Fertilizer: During active growth, feed with Sunshine Megaflor liquid fertilizer (flower booster); it promotes swollen trunk and sets flower buds.
  • Light: Give them bright light year-round. Full sun in mild climates; filtered light if your summers are scorching.
  • Winter rest: Cut water back when days shorten and let the plant rest. Dormancy is normal.
  • Repotting trick: Each time you repot, lift the plant a bit so the crown roots peek above the soil. This encourages bigger caudex.

Desert roses are made for containers, easy enough for a beginner but rewarding enough for a collector.

Add Adenium to your container garden

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🌸 Exotic Adeniums Hot Deal

Six desert rose adenium hybrids with black, pink, yellow, orange, and bicolor flowers in bloom.

Colorful adenium hybrids in bloom at Top Tropicals

Desert roses (Adeniums) are not really roses at all. They are cousins of the plumeria, but gardeners prize them for that swollen base more than for the leaves. Want a little trick? Each time you repot, lift the plant slightly so the crown roots peek above the soil. Over time the base swells into odd shapes. Some look like bottles, others like bonsai elephants. That is half the fun of growing them.

At Top Tropicals we only sell grafted plants. Why? Because seed-grown plants do not keep flower color true, but they are the only ones that form the swollen caudex. With grafting you get the best of both worlds: reliable flower colors from named hybrids and the sculptural trunk from seedling rootstock. You can make hundreds of exotic colors. Tempting, isn’t it? Take advantage of this hot sale offer and and collect them all!

Use the code below to save 15% on any adenium:

ADENIUM15

No min order. Exp. 8-31-25

Read Garden Blog about Adeniums

Shop Adeniums

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Watching things happen. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Watching things happen

Cat Ricki watching a hockey game at TopTropicals

Cat Ricki watching a hockey game at TopTropicals

💻 Watching things happen

"Some people make things happen,
some watch things happen,
and some wonder what happened." - Jim Lovell

🐈📸 Cat Ricki watching a hockey game at TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden 

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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Before eating ice cream, try this fruit from a house plant. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Before eating ice cream, try this fruit from a house plant

Swiss Cheese Plant - Monstera deliciosa

🍨 Before eating ice cream, try this fruit growing on a house plant!
  • 🍨 Most people know Swiss Cheese Plant - Monstera deliciosa - for its big holey leaves, but here’s the wild part: this jungle climber also makes fruit. Real fruit. And it tastes like pineapple mixed with ice cream.
  • 🍨 Have you tried Monstera fruit? Will you eat it again?
  • 🍨 This plant grows in the rainforests of Mexico and Guatemala, where young seedlings crawl toward the shade until they find a tree to climb. Yes, they grow in the direction of the darkest area, not just merely away from light. Interesting, ah?
  • 🍨 In time, it sends out a green, cone-like fruit nearly a foot long. It takes a while to ripen - about a year - and only when the scales start to lift can you peel them back and find the creamy pulp inside. Ice-cream sweet and tropical.
  • 🍨 One catch though: never eat the fruit unripe. The pulp contains oxalic acid that is generally harmless but will burn your mouth. Best trick is to let it wrinkle a little, wrap it up, and wait until the scales loosen on their own. Then it's ready.
  • 🍨 And for collectors? The Thai Constellation, with its cream-splashed leaves, is the crown jewel. Some specimens sell for thousands. Not bad for a "Swiss Cheese Plant"!


🛒 Shop Monstera plants

📚 Learn more:
How to harvest and eat Monstera Ice Cream

#Food_Forest #Container_Garden #Shade_Garden

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