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The Tropical Grower welcomes you to the online version of Our Garden. Check out our What’s Bloomn’ slideshow featuring last week’s flowers, cruz the latest topics at the Blog Page for information, enjoy the Photos, or just check out what’s happening this week in Garden Dirt. While we are Growing Tropical, growing is for everyone, and we’re here to share the green.

Garden Dirt

July 27, 2026

Discombobulated

Unfocused, adrift, all over the place.  Dis-com-bob-u-lated.  Try it.  Super fun to say.  Yup, that was me last week.  Usually, I’m a Grower with a plan.  If it isn’t a set one, at least a vague idea of what I want to accomplish when I walk out the door into Our Garden.  I need to know what tools to take, if nothing else.  LOL! 

Last week, I’d head out, and maybe half accomplish something completely different.  LOL!  Then, I’d get distracted by some minor thing, wander around for a bit, and find another thing to do.  I’m sitting here laughing at myself.  I grew up with ‘Alexander’ and his ‘Very Bad Day’.  Discombobulated isn’t necessarily bad.  Good, Bad, Focused, Distracted, Lucky, Cursed, Fun, Boring, there are always days like that, sometimes even weeks, or years.  Many random weeds got pulled, and weird branches cut, not a total bust.

And despite no clear direction, we did get quite a bit accomplished.  Sometimes in bits and pieces.  LOL!  Looking back, I’d call it a planting week.  That’s always a good thing.

Around Our Garden

It took 2 mornings, with those pesky distractions, but we did get the Schefflera cut off the front of the house.  Woo-Hoo!  We have a bunch of old growth there.  Thick branch and tree-like growth.  Cut it, and it wants to come back, bigger and bader.  Yup, trimming works even if you prefer it didn’t.  So, in addition to trimming what is coming back stronger, we’ve started training the Schefflera branches to circle around and out to support other branches.  If the big loops survive the next couple of weeks, we’ll make more and take some pics.  Fingers crossed.  It is very trainable.

We also got all of the Schefflera cut off the fence, planted.  As a reminder, we’re working on some perimeter landscaping buffers.  Schefflera is a natural choice.  Here, it grows big, is bushy, not pokey, and so trainable.  Check out: .  Now, we need to get all the stuff cut off the house planted.

Along with the Schefflera, we also planted some Spanish Bayonet Yucca, more Giant Elephant Era Philodendron, Philippine Violet and Bougainvillea to fill in the perimeter landscape buffer.  We have lots of all these, and planting rather than removing overgrowth always makes more sense to us.  Finally, we moved one of the new Banana plants over into the Orchard area.  The new tree we planted last year was getting big, and we were expecting Bananas this year, but we had a hard freeze.  The single tree died, and the established Rhizome grew 2 more.  They are about 2 ½ feet with several smaller sprouts.  We moved a bigger one.  Besides having a back-up in another location, always a good idea, we needed some additional screening in this area.  Perfect.  Now, it just needs to get big.  

Butterfly House

It’s official.  Our remaining cocoons went into their July hibernation mode, and we got no new Butterflies.  Dang.  Although good, too.  While we’ve only seen a fluttering few outside, it never occurred to us that they hibernate during the heaviest part of the Rainy Season, and it makes so much sense.  How does something with such delicate wings, that relies on flower pollen being washed away by the rains, survive?  They remain in their cocoons.  Who knew?

So, we’re going to wait, leave them in their sheltered location, and hope to release new babies in the Fall.  Something to look forward to.  Woo-Hoo!

Harvest

Despite it being the Rainy Season which kills most Veggies, our Lima Beans are producing pods.  Woo-Hoo!  Last month, we found some dried Bean pods that had sprouted Beans.  Opps.  You have to bring those in to keep them dry.  So, we planted the sprouted Beans, and we got a whole row of plants.  Growing in the Traditional Veggie and Herb garden area, it’s completely shaded most of the afternoon.  The Beans seem to like it, and we still have 2 living Tomato Plants and a Banana Pepper.  Pretty amazing.

Last week was also seed planting week, inside, in the nursery.  We try to sprout some starter Celery, Cabbage, and Broccoli in July.  The hope is to have strong growers by the Fall planting in Sept.  We also tried to sprout some Brussel Sprouts, which we never have luck with.  LOL!  We filled in the remaining pot areas with Spinach and Banana Peppers.  As soon as all those sprout, we’ll move them and start the Tomatoes.  Woo-Hoo!

Flowers

Last Week, our new Orange Cannas grabbed the Feature.  We just planted them in their forever home a couple of weeks ago, and they took off, putting on a bright orange show.  The petals in almost a faint  cheetah spot of orange and yellow fold out around a bit of bright yellow swirl.  So pretty and numerous.  Cannas are known for their constant production of flowers.  Over and over they appear in bright happy orange.  Woo-Hoo!

The Pink Rain Lilies are almost constantly blooming now.  It’s the rain.  LOL!  In addition to the current Zinnia plants blooming strong, we have lots of new baby plants popping up in all the pots.  Woo-Hoo!  It might have been all the seeds we dropped.  August Zinnias here are usually a big affair.  And, newly flowering both the Streamside Spider Lilies and Bromeliads. Woo-Hoo!  Enjoy!

Check out What’s Bloomn’ slideshow for more flowers or visit Garden Dirt Diary to catch up on what’s been going on around Our Garden.