What is a good exotic looking flowering plant for a shade garden?
Chrysothemis pulchella - Copper Leaf, Black Flamingo
🔥 What is a good exotic looking flowering plant for a shade garden?
🏀 One of the most unusual looking plants in or shade garden collection is Chrysothemis pulchella - Copper Leaf, Black Flamingo.
🏀 It is a spectacular tropical perennial that can be grown as a houseplant or in a greenhouse.
🏀 From summer to late fall it is covered with showy orange-red flowers, may bloom sporadically several times a year.
🏀 Forms a dense mountain of flowers and foliage.
🏀 The plant forms tubers at the base of the stem. By the end of fall the leaves may die back, the plant goes dormant till spring. Then it re-sprouts in Spring again.
Theobroma cacao, commonly known as the Chocolate Tree or Cacao Tree, is very exciting plant and a superfood as we mentioned earlier.
💥 Theobroma means "food of the gods" in Greek. "Theo" means god, and "broma" means food.
💥 The Olmecs, Mayans, and Aztecs were among the first to cultivate cacao, using it to make a bitter beverage called xocoatl. It was often spiced with chili peppers and used in various rituals and ceremonies.
💥 Currency: in ancient Mesoamerican cultures, cacao beans were so valuable that they were used as a form of currency. For example, 100 beans could buy a slave or a turkey.
💥 The Aztecs believed that cacao had stimulating properties and used it as an aphrodisiac. Emperor Montezuma was said to consume a large amount of cacao before visiting his harem. We can't deny that chocolate's mood-enhancing properties, combined with cultural and psychological factors, contribute to its romantic allure! ❤️
💥 A cacao pod contains 20 to 50 beans, each surrounded by a sweet, mucilaginous pulp. The pods grow directly on the trunk and larger branches of the tree, a feature known as cauliflory.
💥 After harvesting, cacao beans are fermented for several days, a critical step that develops the flavor precursors needed for chocolate production.
💥 The Cacao tree thrives in the humid, tropical regions around the equator. It can be grown as an exciting house plant.
💥 Health benefits: cacao beans are rich in antioxidants, magnesium, iron, and other minerals. They also contain flavonoids, associated with heart health benefits.
💥 There are three main varieties of cacao beans: Criollo, Forastero, and Trinitario. Criollo is considered the highest quality but is less common due to its susceptibility to disease. Forastero is the most widely grown, known for its hardiness. Trinitario is a hybrid of the two.
💥 It takes about 400 cacao beans to make one pound of chocolate. The beans undergo roasting, grinding, and mixing with sugar and other ingredients to produce the final chocolate product.
Colorful Mexican Clay
Pottery:
Now available at our Garden Center!
Pick up only, no shipping
We've listened to your requests for beautiful planters and pots, and now we're excited to introduce these new items for our local
customers!
Discover the charm of Mexican pottery with this handcrafted Talavera clay planter! Each pot is hand-painted with colorful flowers and geometric patterns, making every piece a unique work of art. Plus, it comes with a handy drainage hole to keep your plants happy and healthy!
Handcrafted in Mexico. Each pot has a unique, author's design. Exact details of pattern and color saturation vary.
♥️ Passiflora coccinea, or Red Passion Flower, is a spectacular, passion-red variety!
♥️ It is tropical, evergreen vine from South America known for its stunning scarlet-red flowers and edible passion fruit. Yes, the fruit are edible, but they are very rarely seen.
♥️ It thrives in full sun or part shade with fertile, well-drained soils and can grow up to 10-12 feet long.
♥️ This easy-to-grow plant is perfect for trellises, walls, and containers. Minimal pruning is needed, and it blooms primarily in summer and fall.
♥️ Attracting butterflies and hummingbirds 🐝
💻 Do you grow Passion vines? Share yours in comments👇
🔥 What is hotter that hot pepper? Wiri Wiri Pepper! - it's about how to live long and have a great skin.
🌶 These two peppers are a must for spice lovers - intense fruity habanero flavor packs quite a bang! 💥
Extremely showy, these ornamental peppers have culinary benefits and are great for container garden.
❤️ Capsicum annuum x chinense - ❤️-shaped Biquinho Pepper that you saw in earlier post. An exceptionally distinct pepper, an ancient hybrid of Capsicum annuum (bird pepper) and Capsicum chinense (habanero group). While of small size (1"), these heart-shaped red fruits are prolifically produced along the branches of compact plants.
🔴 Capsicum frutescens - Wiri Wiri Pepper from Guyana is the illustrious gem; hard sought and rarely found. This plant produces good yields of small 1/2" berry shaped hot peppers. Peppers grow upright, are very hot, and turn from green, to orange, to red when mature. Guyanese dinners will only take one of those meals for you to never forget! The secret of their food is the flavor, and one of the cornerstone ingredients in many of their dishes is the Wiri pepper. The Guyanese population claim that it is not just a key ingredient to their diet, but also to why they are so good looking, live so long, and have such great skin.
❗️ What makes these peppers so much different than any other hot peppers?
Hot? Yes, it is important that hot peppers are, but the people who really know, know that it is not just about heat, it is about flavor! And that is exactly what makes these little red gems so special.
