Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Date: 19 Jul 2025

Mango Tebow

Tebow Mango

🥭 Tebow Mango - smooth, sweet, and melting.
Mango Rainbow🌈
  • 🟡 Mango Tebow is Kent x Edward hybrid, an excellent late season variety. It is a Florida-born favorite named after Tim Tebow.
  • 🟡 Fiber-free, smooth orange flesh with a sweet, tropical pineapple-coconut twist. It's juicy, fragrant, and just melts in your mouth.
  • 🟡 A compact, heavy-bearing tree - perfect for home growers.


🛒 Shop Mango varieties

📚 Previous posts: #Mango_Rainbow - varieties you should try

#Food_Forest #Mango #Mango_Rainbow

🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals

Date: 29 Sep 2024

Discover three must-have fruit
for every tropical garden

Cat  with  tropical  fruit

Q: I love tropical fruit and want to plant all of them but I have room for only a couple of trees. Help me make the best selection.

A: Here is your perfect list for 2+ fruiting plants: every tropical garden must have a Mango Tree, an Avocado Tree, and - you can plant as many as you want - Pineapples! And here is why...

1. Pineapple

Pineapple is a tropical favorite that's incredibly easy to grow, making it a perfect choice for beginners. With minimal care, Pineapples don't take mush space, you can grown them underneath other fruit trees. Plant good varieties, and when you get your crop, plant the tops and you will have your little Pineapple plantation in no time: you'll enjoy sweet, juicy fruit from those little babies in about 18-24 months. Freshly harvested pineapples are delightful in smoothies, salads, or grilled, adding a tropical flair to your garden.

Pineapple

2. Mango

Mango trees are not only a staple in tropical gardens but are also easy to cultivate. They flourish in sunny spots and well-drained soil, requiring little maintenance once established. These vigorous trees can yield an abundance of juicy, flavorful fruit in just a few years. They are perfect for fresh eating or adding to salsas and chutneys. Condo varieties are dwarf trees and can be grown in containers.

Mango  fruit

3. Avocado

Avocado trees are fun to grow and add both beauty and nutrition to tropical gardens. Grafted cultivars start yielding fruit within a few months with proper care. The rich, creamy avocados are a culinary favorite, perfect for salads, spreads, and smoothies. With their lush foliage and bountiful harvests, avocado trees are a fantastic choice for gardeners looking for ease and abundance.

Avocado  fruit

Date: 24 Jun 2018

We can ID plants for you! Even Mango Elephant...

Q: I had a mango tree, the fruit was very large and no one knew the name of it. Can you please tell me the name of it or something about it? I have never seen this variety before. It weighed in at 7 lbs, it smells a little like bubble gum, its flesh is fiberless and the taste is watery with a little sweet. And do you have it for sale? I don't have the tree anymore. My pictures are about a year or two old, lighting struck the tree and it died so I have been trying ever since then to find another tree but I don't know what kind it is. I originally bought the tree on side of the road cause I always wanted a mango tree so I didn't care at the time what kind it was so I bought it but I was shocked at how big the mango was. However I collected rotten mangoes off the ground and planted the seeds. Only one germinated.

A: This mango is called Elephant. We will try to find this grafted variety and let you know when we have it. Unfortunately seedlings take many years to fruit (8-15 for mango) and usually do not come trues to seed.
The closest variety by fruit size is Lancetilla, it is a giant 5 lb fruit, of a very good quality. And the best tasting and the most popular - Nam Doc Mai!

Remember at Top Tropicals, we can help you to identify plants for you! Just send us a picture. Close up of leaves and/or flowers/fruit will be always helpful. Top Tropicals plant experts are always here to help!

Date: 23 Sep 2020

Fast-fruiting trees?

Photo above: Annona reticulata - Red Custard Apple

Q: More of a question than a review, but a review regarding your catalog, it would be easier for us buyers, if we could search for plants that produce fruit in 2 years or less, I don't have the patience to wait longer than that for fruit. I'm trying to buy for a fairly good sized garden but want some fast growers and fruit produced in 2 yrs. Can you help me out?

A: Fruiting time depends on many factors (established size, growing conditions, fertilizing, and even specific variety), this is why we can not just put a simple icon "will fruit within 2 years".
However, most grafted and air-layered fruit trees, including all Mango, Avocado, Loquat, Sapote, Sapodilla, Lychee/Longan, Peaches and Nectarines - will fruit right away. If you see in our store "grafted" or "air-layered" in plant description - these trees will fruit soon. Some of them already flowering and fruiting.
Some non-grafted trees or seedlings like Annona, Artocarpus (Jackfruit), Eugenia, Guava, Banana, Dragon fruit, Mulberry, Blackberry/Raspberry - will fruit within 3-4 years from seed or even sooner (Banana, Mulberry, Dragon fruit, Blackberry-Raspberry - within a year). Usually it says in description that this plant can produce fruit soon.
Bigger size plants are more established and have more energy to produce, so try to get larger size plants if your budget permits, and especially if you can pick up bigger plants rather than shipping them - obviously, shipping has size limitations.
In addition, all spice trees like Bay Leaf, Bay Rum, Allspice and many more - they will produce spice for you right away, so you don't need to wait at all!
If you have questions about fruiting time on any specific plant you put your eye on, don't hesitate to ask!

Photo above: Pimenta dioica - Allspice

Date: 29 Aug 2019

How to establish a Mango Tree

Q: I received my mango tree from you on Monday and it looked beautiful. I followed the instructions and kept it out of direct sun. I watered it a little each day when the potting mix was dry to the touch. But the leaves are turning yellow and brown then falling off. Should I have removed the tree from the soil it was packed in?

A: Leaf drop and dry/yellow leaves are normal symptoms of shipping stress. Your mango tree looks healthy overall. Considering you have high humidity now in Louisiana, the plant should recover soon under proper care. These are important tips:

- Keep the plant in bright shade, away from direct sun - at least for a week, then you may start moving it gradually to semi-shade, then to full sun within a few days.
- Do not over-water. If the top of the soil is still moist, do not water until it dries a little bit. Mango prefers to stay on a dry side. From this point, over-watering is more dangerous than under-watering. You may skip a watering if in doubt.
- If it rains every day, make sure to keep the pot under the roof to protect from excessive water.
- Do not remove original soil and do not disturb roots.
- You used the right container size and looks like you have a quality soil with good drainage. Keep the plant in this container at least for a few months. You may step it up only when you see a lot of active growth of branches and leaves - this means, the root system is developing fast too.
- do not fertilize until you see new growth. Then use Mango Food Smart release.
- to help the plant recover from stress, you may use SUNSHINE-E booster and micro-element foliar spray with SUNSHINE-Superfood.