Does Anyone Grow Tropicals?

Although I'm concentrating more on drought tolerant plants this year, I still love tropical flowers. The gingers are my favorite. They are so exotic and their fragrance is heavenly.

Hello bloomer, i have a few, nothing to exotic though, i have bananas, cannas, tree ferns, fushias, thats about it really, a few little annuals that are very tender, it has been a very hard winter here, the worst for a long time, it has killed off a lot of my cannas and Bananas, but i have started to get a few more in now, they make a very nice show and a change from the run off the mill stuff.

Alan.

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I grwo many exotic plants outdoors here in Cornwall,UK like bananas,gingers,tree ferns,cacti/succulents,palms in fact many plants that would surprise you!
Check out my website>>

http://members.tripod.co.uk/kernxotica/

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Lee

I found your website not long ago while doing a search.

Nice site......love that Amaryllis belladonna picture.

Bloomer

Bananas, the Cavendish variety. I'm STILL waiting to eat my first banana though. :(

Terri

Yep,
I love tropicals, although every winter when they have to come inside (most of them), I swear, no more..LOL..Ha! Who needs a dining table to eat on?
I grow several varities of Clerodendrums, Hibiscus, Jacobean,Bromialds, cactus, Ginger's and a few others.

We only drop to -3C here in Cornwall so many tropicals can be grown without protection.
Glad you like my site.

Hi Bloomer! I love tropicals. I grow plenty of 'em. I am zone 9 too! Most of them took a beating this winter, but they are all starting to show signs of life again! Lisa

Hey ya'll...didn't realize I was into "tropicals", just thought they were my hobby plants! In the g-house I have two banana plants, both with fruit (and I'm getting impatient waiting for them to ripen!), also about 8 to 10 pineapple plants, three of which have produced fruit (one has done so 3 times!). Also have kumquat, loquat, various figs (altho probably not considered a tropical, eh?), Meyer lemon. Most will get moved outside when the weather becomes more 'kinder and gentler'. Just love them banana trees on the deck all summer!

Horseshoe, do your loquat trees produce fruit? We grow them outside down here. I just love them. I've sent 'Pebbles' some trees in the mail, I hope they produce for her. We also can grow figs directly in the ground too. Lisa

Horseshoe, what variety of bananas have you got planted? How big is the container you've got them planted in? That's great news about the pineapples! I'm impressed! :)

Oops! Forgot to mention that I'm also growing kiwi like the fuzzy kind in the grocery store. I hope to have fruit this year.

Terri

Yo Lisa...my loquat is in its first yr...in a nice-sized container...will set it outside when the weather stabilizes. Supposedly it will fruit. When I lived in Fla we had them in the yard and I miss the fruit SO much! Pete2, the banana plants have each produced a cluster of fruit...both clusters have what I consider small bananas, most only about 4 inches or a bit more long...does it sound like Cavendish to you? They are in good-sized pots about 3 ft across and 2 and a half ft deep...and just dying to get back outside! Lisa, we also grow a few figs here outside...the ones in the g-house are being grown for stock (LSU purple, Hardy Chicago, and a couple others that don't come to mind at the moment). Petey, the pineapples are some of my favorites! I took one to the market one yr just for show and so many people walked up and accused me of "glue-ing" a pineapple to a plant as a trick...they'd never seen them before! Also, in the garden area I have kiwi growing, but the smooth-skinned kind...no fruit yet tho. Let me end this post b4 I go off on a story about your fuzzy kiwi...ya'll know my mind is a bit of a mess sometimes!

They sound like Cavendish, Horseshoe. The fingers of Cavendish are about 6-8 inches long and sweet.

I just read something interesting about pineapples in one of my books. Pineapple plants should produce fruit in 20 months or so. But when the plant is about 18 inches tall, you can coax it to bloom and form fruit by placing an apple on top of the pot. Ethylene gas given off by the apple triggers the flowering. You enclose the plant and the apple in a plastic tent and move it to a shady spot so that the heat does not build up inside the plastic. After one week, remove the plastic and notice the new growth--the edible fruit--starting to form in the center of the plant. Cool beans huh?

Terri

I plant a number of tropicals, though I hesitate to say I actually successfully 'grow' them. But most do pretty well south of here (just north of Los Angeles). We have bananas, cannas, Sterlitzias, palms (my favorite- have over 200 species in the ground... and some actually are doing well), ferns (tree, creeping and staghorn), cycads, hibiscus, gingers, citrus (is that tropical?), and all sorts of succulents (over 1000 species, though some of those I can't find anymore)... noticed there weren't too many palm discussions on this site... too bad.

There was a program on HGTV Saturday afternoon on a tropical garden. Their secret was rabbit manure. Does anyone else use it in their garden?

Dene

Tropical are kind of a way of life here in New Orleans! Its funny to see them becoming something of a national gardening trend - plants such as gingers and brugmansias that have been passalong plants here for generations. ("Oh that old thing? My grandmother had those all over the place!") Gardeners here lust after "exotic" things like columbine. (Delphs are my personal obsession - maybe if I installed air conditioning in that raised bed...) A personal favorite is strobilanthes or "Persian Shield" - it has beautiful metallic purple and silver leaves and thrives in heat and humidity. Looks stunning behind impatiens and likes the same conditions. Its becoming more widely available now and I even saw some at Home Depot last spring. I'll have tons of cuttings later in the season if anyone interested. There's a new variety that I'm looking for which has less colorful leaves but which forms large deep blue-violet flowers - I think its sold under the moniker "Persian Violet." A few nurseries here carry it but its very expensive yet.

I grow ALOT of canna. And ALWAYS looking for varieties I don't have.

Also grow brugmansia, gingers, calla, variegates, etc. And abutilon. I live zone 6, but LOVE my tropicals!
Alice

Well, besides the gingers, I have bananas (which I'm tired of...looks ratty in winter), cannas, ferns. I have bird of paradise in pots (5 years old and no blooms yet) and a plumeria I lug in each winter just for the 2 week display of magenta blooms in summer.
Tried a palm once...it died and I never tried again. I suppose I should because they are the epitome of tropical.