Greetings Growers & Lovers of Green Things

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

October 26, 2026

Happy Halloween

Fall Harvest, or Day of the Dead if your celebration leans that way.  We’re Featuring the newly blooming Marigolds in its honor.  Some years we do Pumpkin flowers or something bright Orange, but this year the Yellow Marigolds gave a wave.  They were hard to miss.

I’m not going to lie, we love Halloween.  The decorations give everything a lovely warm orange glow, like a great sunset, every night.  LOL.  The fun costumes, warm spicy smells and festive mood.  But, we got to go Trick-or-Treating as kids, My Mom made great costumes and anything ‘Haunted’, walks, rides, houses, give me the giggles.  It’s true.  LOL.  What’s not to like?

If it’s not your thing, that’s okay with us too.  Fun and Festive, should be fun and festive.  For us, we’ll enviously run our hands all over the massive carving Pumpkins, we’re unable to grow, so far.  And then, we’ll gut ‘em, saving the seeds.  Our best crop to date gave us Pumpkins in June.  LOL.  It’s super hard to spin that, Fall at the beginning of Summer.  Who wants that?  LOL!  Whatever your thing, we hope it brings you joy. 

Around Our Garden

With perfect growing weather, nice weather all around, everything that wasn’t a tiny sprout, went from the nursery into the ground.  Seeds too.  If we hadn’t already used the Title ‘Tropical Farming’ we might have considered using it with an ‘Again’.  LOL.  Not really, as mentioned, we wait all year to wish everyone a Happy Halloween.  But, planting was front and center in Our Garden all week.  The good news, almost everything started growing along nicely.  If they survive the storm this week, we should be good.  We’ll be watching to see if they need to be covered.

You might remember back in September all the Broccoli starter plants were set outside to get used to the outside temps, and something ate them.  All of them.  Down to the nubs.  Dang.  We immediately dropped new seeds in the nursery, and they were ready last week, probably.  A little smaller than we prefer, but perfectly acceptable size for planting.  LOL.  We keep peeking at them, just to make sure.  Grumpy Old Man Buc Dog dislikes the delays.  LOL.

Harvest

The Key Limes keep coming.

The Corn is developing Tassels.  Those are the floppy things that come straight out of the top.  They hold the pollen which eventually will fall down on the Silks that develop along the side of the stalks to pollinate them.  That’s where the Corn will grow.  Hopefully.  We’ve seen no signs of Silks, yet.  We’re watching anxiously.  The only advice is: keep them moist.  And, wait.  Dang.

The Black Beans and Cantaloupe have started to flower, and the Cucumbers decided to grow through the shade palm fronds we added.  Woo-Hoo! And Dang.  Plan B for shade, not working.  Well, not high enough.  Maybe on to Plan C.  The plants are happy with the shade.  We probably need to keep that up.  

Flowers

As mentioned, the Yellow Marigolds started to bloom a couple of weeks ago, and amazingly so last week.  With their layers and layers of bright fluffy petals, they symbolize love, memory, and the unbroken bond between generations.  How lovely is that?  The big thick stalks have been developing through the Rainy Season, and the buds started really popping out last week.  Woo-Hoo!  My personal favorites are the ones near our entrance, in Wildflower pots.  The morning sun filtered through the Ligustrum leaves hits them just right.  **Sigh*

The Purple Shamrocks sent up lovely little stalks dotted with tiny blooms.  One of my most favorites to photograph.  Like the Pink Rain Lilies, they glow, shine and sparkle in the sunlight.  Woo-Hoo!  The giant Orange Cosmos was joined by the Yellow ones.  We’re loving the Fall Wildflowers.  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.