🔥 How to grow your own Pepper plants. Five most valuable 'Pipers'.

ℹ️ Leafy Pepper plants - Pipers - are a source of black pepper and many other "peppery" flavors. These plants come from the Piperaceae family and are used as a spice for their pungent, peppery flavor. Don't confuse them with with Capsicum peppers, such as bell and chili peppers.

• 🔻Piper sarmentosum - Vietnamese Pepper, Lalot: it is eaten raw in salads or cooked with other greens or dishes, or wrap meats and cook in oven or on stove or grill. It is used medicinally in India and SE Asia. The root is also chewed with Betel Nut as a tonic and medicine. The leaves are used as food (food wraps) in Vietnam.
• 🔻 Piper nigrum - Black Pepper: While black and white pepper were already known in antiquity, but green pepper (and even more, red pepper) is a recent invention. Pungent and aromatic. The pungency is strongest in white pepper and weakest in green pepper, while black and green pepper are more aromatic than the white one. Moderate growing vine that can be grown on a trellis. Prefers shade to semi-shade.
• 🔻 Piper auritum - Root Beer Plant, False Kava-Kava: close relative of Piper methysticum (Kava-Kava) and probably has some similar tonic effects. It is used for its spicy aromatic scent and flavor, liken to root beer, or to anise-clove. Huge leaves can grow over a foot long. The leaves are used for flavoring, as wrappings for meats and tamales.
• 🔻 Piper betle - Betel leaf: very popular Indian spice with medicinal properties. Chewed with Betel Nut as a tonic and medicine. Great for wrapping food (similar to grape leaves).
• 🔻 Piper longum - Indian Long Pepper, Pippali, Bengal Pepper: edible and medicinal plant used as spice and in traditional Chinese medicine. Fruit used as a spice and seasoning. It has sweeter and less pungent taste than Black pepper. Highly valued medicinal plant used to treat respiratory infections, stomachache, bronchitis, cough, and much more.

Learn more:
📚 Vietnamese Pepper - Lalot food wraps BBQ recipe
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🎀 What is our most favorite Ginger plant? African Princess!

• 👸 The most beautiful Ginger flower, in our opinion, is Costus fissiligulatus - African Princess, or Cameroon Costus - an amazing flowering Ginger from Gabon in West Africa.
• 👸 Dazzling pink trumpet flower with a yellow throat. It is very floriferous with an inflorescence of numerous flower buds.
• 👸 Low-growing plant only 3-4 ft that stands very erect.
• 👸 Easy grower with similar growing requirements to other gingers.

💻 What is your most favorite ginger? Share in comments!

📚 Gingers from previous posts:

Most interesting edible gingers
5 most spectacular Ginger species
How to French Kiss the Red Button Ginger

🛒 Get your own African Princess

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🍳 Fragrant Fried Eggs for bees and butterflies 🐝

• 🟡 Oncoba spinosa - Fried egg tree - is a conversation piece in your garden.
• 🟡 A medium shrub or small tree.
• 🟡 Beautiful white and yellow camellia-like flowers look like 'fried eggs' when they drop off and fall on the ground with their yellow stamens facing upwards.
• 🟡 Flowers are honey-sweet fragrant and attract butterflies and bees.
• 🟡 The fruits have a sour, edible pulp.

🛒 Get a Fried egg tree

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Would you like to spice Up Your Garden with Variegated Ginger?

• 🌿 Alpinia Zerumbet Variegata is a clumping ginger valued for its beautiful variegated foliage. With its colorful foliage and beautiful flowers, variegated ginger is a stunning ornamental.
• 🌿 Striking Foliage: Glossy green leaves with white striping add a pop of color and interest to your garden.
• 🌿 Unique Flowers: Unlike other gingers, its beautiful, fragrant, shell-like flowers droop from leafy stems, adding summer charm.
• 🌿 Perfect Size: This small shrub grows 2-4 feet tall and can be pruned for size control.
• 🌿 Moisture Lover: Keep the soil moist for happy, thriving plants.
• 🌿 Ideal Conditions: Thrives in shaded garden corners with organically rich, well-drained soil. Mulch for best results.
• 🌿 Low Maintenance: No serious insect or disease problems, making it an easy addition to your garden.
• 🌿 Indoor Option: Can be grown as a houseplant with bright light and humid conditions, reaching 3-4 feet indoors.
• 🌿 Edibe: Like every ginger, this ornamental beauty also has edible rhizomes.

🛒 Shop Vriegated Ginger

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🗿 The biggest flower in the world - Amorphophallus. The name speaks for itself.

After meeting Sausage Tree and Clitoria, are you ready for the Amorphophallus? Now you have seen everything!

• 💀 Common names of this exceptional plant: Voodoo lily, Devils tongue, Snake Palm, Elephant Foot Yam, Corpse flower.
• 💀 Why Corpse flower? Because of the smell that the flower omits, which is only present for a few hours after the flower opens - to attract pollinator flies!
• 💀 Amorphophallus is the largest flower in the world and one of the most exotic bizarre flowers. Amorphophallus titanum is known for its massive size, its flower can reach heights of over 10 feet and blooms only once every few years.
• 💀 This perennial exotic Asian plant grows a single, elongated center called a corm (that is actually edible) and a single large leaf that wraps around it.
• 💀 The seed stalk is very pretty with the seeds changing colors from green to red. During this time the tuber will not produce a leaf. After the flower and seed stalk dies away, a giant single leaf grows from the tuber.
• 💀 The single leaf dormant in winter, then in spring the plant shoots out this fantastic flower again.
• 💀 It is relatively cold hardy tropical and can survive cooler winters during dormancy.
• 💀 Can be easily grown in a pot as a houseplant.

🎥 Amorphophallus bulbifer and other specials in next post.

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