📅 Mark Your Calendar - Holiday Plant Market

Holiday season in Florida means sunshine, green leaves, and cats on patrol. On Saturday 12/13/25, our PeopleCats are hosting a special Holiday Plant Market at TopTropicals, 9 am to 4 pm. This is not a regular nursery day. This is the one where you grab a donut in one hand, a mango tree in the other, and try not to trip over a cat giving you a tour.

We are bringing out the best plants we grew all year: big fruit trees with real branches, flowering and fragrant beauties, rare collectors plants, and vines that are ready to take off as soon as you get them home. December is perfect planting weather in Florida, so while the rest of the country is scraping frost from windshields, you can be choosing which banana, mango, or jasmine will perfume your yard next summer.

Holiday extras: 30% OFF online prices, free plant with purchase, 5 to 10 dollar specials, mini donuts and holiday treats, iced tea and citrus water, tropical Christmas music, and raffle prizes. If there is enough ripe fruit in the morning, we will set up a tasting table too. Our PeopleCats will be on duty all day, rearranging plants, checking on visitors, and occasionally allowing themselves to be petted between tours.

Event discounts and specials are valid at both locations:

• Ft Myers Garden Center: 13890 Orange River Blvd, Ft Myers, FL 33905
• Sebring Farm: 9100 McRoy Rd, Sebring, FL 33875

Save the date, tell a friend, and plan your plant hunting route now. Come celebrate the holidays the Florida way: sunshine, rare fruit trees, happy cats, and a car full of tropical plants going home with you.

Facebook event page - Download invitation

to confirm attendance
RSVP on Facebook!

Learn More About The Holiday Plant Market

🍲 Where the Garden Becomes the Kitchen

A lot of plants that thrive in Florida heat have deep roots in Mexico, and not just as ornamentals. Think coral vine or flame vine climbing a fence in summer, or bird of paradise sitting at the edge of a patio like it owns the place. These are not plants that need coaxing. They grow fast, full, and unapologetically. Then there are the plants you actually eat: peppers, prickly pear , sweetleaf, and fruit trees like avocado, guava, and sapodilla. They do not just decorate the yard. They change how the yard works, and how the kitchen feels all year.

That is the part that sneaks up on you. Gardening stops being about having a pretty yard and starts becoming a way of living. Mango tacos taste different when you picked the mango yourself. Everything does.

🍀Mexican Plants That Thrive With Minimal Effort

by Tatiana Anderson, Top Tropicals Garden Expert

These Mexican plants are surprisingly easy to grow if you give them what they expect: sun, heat, and good drainage. Most of them are built for tough conditions and will grow fast with minimal care once established.

The one rule that matters: fill the planting hole with water. If it does not drain in 5-10 seconds, plant on a mound or use a container.

Flowering vines will take off quickly, edibles like peppers and sweetleaf lippia are very forgiving, and cactus types prefer to be left alone rather than overwatered.

For full, step-by-step growing tips and plant-specific advice, read our blog - we break everything down in practical, real-world terms.

📚 Top Tropicals Garden Blog

🛒 Shop heat tolerant plants

🌮 Sunshine’s Mango Taco 😺

This is not cooking. This is assembly.

What you need

• Tortillas
• 1 ripe mango (diced)
• Something warm (sweet potato, chicken, or leftovers)
• A little onion (optional)
• Lime (or bottled lime juice)
• Sour cream or yogurt
• Salt and pepper

How Sunshine does it

1. Heat whatever you have in a pan
2. Put mango in a bowl, add lime and a pinch of salt
3. Mix sour cream with lime (this is your sauce)
4. Put everything into a tortilla
5. Enjoy with a margarita

Sunshine's rules

• No measuring
• No recipes
• If it tastes good, it is correct

Want this to be normal?
Start with a mango tree. That is usually how it begins.

🛒 Plant your own mango tree

💌 Mother's Day is one week away

Still deciding? A gift card is the easiest option. With our bonus, it is also the best value.

🎁 Get a Gift Card

Healthy Plants: Q&A from Mr Booster

New Boosters for the New Year!
Sunshine Total Feed: Orchidasm and Citron

How to grow everblooming orchids?

Q: I ended up with a large collection of orchids that I was given as presents... They grow well but unfortunately after the showy blooms were gone, I don't see any more flowers, just green leaves. What do I need to do to make them bloom again? Should I fertilize them with Azalea bloom booster?

A: Orchids culture is different from garden ornamental plants. First big difference, they are epiphytes, growing in a loose bark medium rather than soil, and benefit from daily mist. Second difference is a type of fertilizer. You can not use a regular garden fertilizer on orchids, because they are very sensitive to salts. Orchids need special, acidic type of fertilizer, very mild in action.
Luckily, Sunshine Boosters formulas are exactly what orchids need! They are amino-acid based, have very mild formulas, and do not create nutrient lock up (building up salts is one of the biggest enemies of tender orchids).
A new Sunshine Boosters Orchidasm TotalFeed is scientifically balanced orchid food that contains all necessary nutrients, including micro-elements, for healthy, happy, vigorous orchids. It can be used as often as daily with every foliage spray. From our testing experience, after using Orchidasm Booster, orchids not only got happy and thriving - they also bloom more often - up to several times a year, shooting new flower spikes one after another! (while normal blooming cycle for most orchids is once a year). It gets even better - the flower display lasts twice longer!
To enjoy these beautiful flowers year around - treat them with Love, give them some Orchidasm!

See more information with pictures in Sunshine Boosters Orchid Blog

Secrets of a healthy Citrus tree

Q: We planted several citrus trees in our yard - Meyer Lemon, Grapefruit and Blood Orange. The trees came from the store full of flowers and even had a few fruit, but a year after planting - no more flowers! The old leaves are green, but new growth doesn't look healthy, leaves are yellowish and have spots, maybe eaten by bugs (?), and how do we get them to fruit?

A: Citrus plants are not the easiest trees to grow; they are susceptible to various diseases, pests, and deficiencies, especially in areas with high humidity/rainfall like Florida. Fungi, viruses, leaf minors, chlorosis - this is not a complete list of citrus common problems. In commercial groves, these conditions are kept under control by using harsh chemicals on solid schedule.
For home gardeners, growing citrus trees may become a challenge. Many people don't want to use harsh chemicals on their edibles; and those who do, may not always have time to apply treatments on a professional schedule. So as much as we all love a fresh juicy orange, growing your own may become quite a pain!
Sunshine Citron TotalFeed is your simple, eco-safe solution to a healthy looking, productive citrus tree with organic fruit! Amino-acid based formula provides all necessary elements to strengthen the tree and make it resistant to possible problems.
Did you know that treatment of leaf chlorosis (yellow leaves with dark green veins), commonly treated with iron supplements, in fact requires a complex combination of nutrients - both balanced NPK and micro-elements?
Use Sunshine Citron in combination with Sunshine GreenLeaf and Sunshine SuperFood and never see yellow chlorotic leaves again!
Apply Sunshine Epi on regular basis (every 2 weeks) and help your tree boost its immune system and stay virus-free.
Add Sunshine Honey, and you will have large, juicy fruit that are much sweeter and more flavorful than those from the store! All these boosters are compatible with each other, and perfectly natural. Eat your fruit safely and enjoy...

Read more about treating citrus tree defficiencies in Sunshine Boosters Citrus Blog.

Featured plant. Randia formosa - Blackberry jam fruit

Randia formosa - Blackberry jam fruit

This unique compact plant, perfect for container culture, combines features of a fragrant flower and tasty desert fruit. Kids love it! Originally from Central and South America, this rare tropical small evergreen tree bears fruit which tastes like fresh Blackberry jam. Many claim that it's even better than preserves. Closely related to the gardenia, its flowers are sweetly fragrant. This relatively hardy tropical has attractive foliage and can be grown in a container as well as in the ground. The Randia formosa (or Rosenbergiodendron formosum) produces as many as 25 to 30 fruits at a time. Since it blooms for a few months in the fall and winter, fruiting and flowering can be enjoyed when many other plants are dormant. Large tubular white flowers that attract nocturnal moths... Read more about this plant...

Get it from our store... Limited quanity!