Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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Climbing 10 feet for Vanilla Beans! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Climbing 10 feet for Vanilla Beans!

Vanilla Bean Orchid - Vanilla planifolia

⭐️ Climbing 10 feet… for Vanilla Beans!
  • ⚡️ One of our Vanilla Bean Orchids at TopTropicals has big ambitions - it's already climbed 10 feet up a pine tree! We’re waiting (impatiently!) for those elegant yellow-green flowers, which will hopefully turn into vanilla beans.
  • ⚡️ Vanilla Bean Orchid (Vanilla planifolia) is the plant behind that sweet, comforting vanilla flavor we all love. It starts off like any potted orchid, but soon sends out aerial roots and becomes a climber, wrapping itself around trees or trellises. In its natural habitat, it grows high into forest canopies, but in the garden it will happily scale any sturdy support you give it.
  • ⚡️ Once established, it flowers and sets the long green pods we call vanilla beans. Growing your own is a lesson in patience - from flower to dried bean can take month - but nothing beats harvesting your own vanilla for the kitchen.


📚 Learn more:

📱How to produce your own vanilla: secrets of hand-pollination.

🛒 Climb toward your own beans

#Shade_Garden #Container_garden #Food_Forest

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Homegrown coffee - the journey begins. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Homegrown coffee - the journey begins

Coffee tree - Coffea arabica

☕️ Homegrown coffee - the journey begins!

Coffee trees (Coffea arabica) that you saw blooming at Top Tropicals in May with fragrant, gardenia-like flowers, now in August - they are loaded with fruit! We will update on them once they turn red and ripe...

🛒 Start your own coffee harvest

📚 Learn more:

#Food_Forest #Container_Garden #Shade_Garden

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Natures weirdest flower? This ones in the running. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Natures weirdest flower? This ones in the running

⭐️ Nature’s weirdest flower? This one’s in the running

📱

#Nature_Wonders #Container_Garden
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The bizarre bloom you cant stop staring at. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

The bizarre bloom you cant stop staring at

Stapelia gigantea - Zulu Giant, Carrion Plant

⭐️ The bizarre bloom you cant stop staring at
  • ⭐️If there were an award for the strangest flower, the Starfish Flower - Stapelia gigantea - would be a top contender. Also known as the Zulu Giant or Carrion Plant, it produces massive blooms, sometimes 12 inches across, that look exactly like starfish. The pale ochre-yellow petals are lined with fine maroon stripes, giving the flowers a texture and color you can't ignore.
  • ⭐️ And then there's the smell!🐱

    • Its nickname Carrion Plant comes from its uncanny scent of rotting meat. While that might not sound appealing, it's a brilliant strategy for attracting its pollinators - flies - who can't resist investigating! Just like Amorphophallus - Corpse flower! 🐱
  • ⭐️The plant itself is a stunner even without flowers, with chunky, 4-angled succulent stems that sprawl sideways. In the ground, it can spread up to 24 inches wide, and in a pot, it makes a fantastic conversation piece. Despite its cactus-like appearance, it's actually a member of the Milkweed family. When it sets seed, each pod bursts to release silky parachutes that float away just like milkweed.
  • ⭐️It's bizarre, beautiful, and guaranteed to get people talking!


🛒 Add the Zulu giant to your garden

📚 Learn more:
The most bizarre flower

🎥 More video:

#Nature_Wonders #Container_Garden
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