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

September 29, 2026

Sprout Murderer

Fall was definitely listening last week when we said Hello.  Most of the week we woke to cool mornings and no rain.  In fact, we even got the lovely 80-60 split.  60s in the morning, just barely, climbing into the 80s.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was Spring.  LOL.  The only dark spot in the days, we need the rain.  It’s the Rainy Season and we’re in the tropical zones.  More, intense sunlight.  Yeah, we need the rain.  And, luckily, it’s in the forecast.  If you believe in that sort of thing.  LOL.  Ours feels like a really bad psychic.  Lots of pretty props and no real information.  Chuckling.

With the nice weather, we dropped starter Veggie plants.  Woo-Hoo!  The sun was still a bit too intense for a few, and we began adding individual shade to the babies just starting their new growth.  In case you missed that, we lost a few.  Not only those, we also had a Sprout Murderer enter the Lanai (screened porch) by dead of night and chomp the Broccoli, Roma Tomato, and Flame Tomato starter plants while they were adjusting to outside temps.  There were only a couple of tiny stems left.  Boo-Hiss!  The Sprout Murderer also took a whole Habanero Pepper.  So . . . there’s that.  LOL.

Around Our Garden

Yup, it was a planting frenzy.  Starter plants from the nursery were set outside, in the shade, at the planting spots.  We learned our lesson after we lost the 1st set of pots ready to plant.  I’m not going to lie, it was frustrating.  And why did it break into the Lanai, but not touch anything in the planting areas.  It’s all a mystery.

More Celery, Sweet Peas and Tomatoes went into the Traditional Veggie and Herb garden.  For the Tomatoes, we started with 2 Beefsteaks, a Yellow Stuffer, and a Yellow Pear in the TV&H area, and we dropped 2 Roma plants in the Raised Crop Beds.  We’re sprouting more to replace the murdered ones.  We also dropped 11 more Celery in the TV&H area in addition to the ones already planted in the Raised Crop Beds.  My Mom always requests as much Celery as we can grow.  LOL.  We’ll start working it into the beds next.

The 1st round of Cabbage and Turnips joined the other sprouts and starter plants in the Raised Crop Beds.  Woo-Hoo!  As mentioned, it’s supposed to rain all week.  We hope the little planties are big enough to survive the pounding.  We did end up covering them a bit to provide some shade.  It should provide a bit of coverage.  If not, we’ll start again.  Our weather is always wild this time of year.  Usually Hurricanes, and we practice supplemental planting, meaning we don’t plant every space at once.  Steady plantings means a steady harvest.  We’re always sprouting in the nursery as things go out.  Woo-Hoo!  We love baby sprouts.

We also dropped 2 small Broccoli in the Raised Crop Beds and 2 in the Raised Hibiscus Bed where we are growing the Corn.  While these are not normally good planting mates, meaning they provide no benefit to each other and compete for nutrients, we hope they are far enough apart to grow nicely.  They’re pretty small as the bigger ones were eaten.  The Corn may be Harvested before it’s an issue.  Hopefully.

While planting seems like it should have taken up all our time and it was a ton, we also had basic maintenance to do.  Weeding, weeding, and more weeding.  It never ends.  The kids also came and got a bunch of the plants we’d been potting for them.  The outside nursery looks a little empty.  Time to start propagating, again.  LOL!

Harvest

More lovely Key Limes made their way into the fridge.  More than we expected.  We’re not seeing them on the tree, but they’re falling.  Maybe it isn’t as bad of a Harvest as we thought.  Woo-Hoo!  We like it when that happens.

The rest of the Veggies are growing along.  We have Watermelon, Cantaloupe, and Butternut Squash sprouts.  The additional Beans we planted came up alongside a few of the ones we were trying to replace.  LOL.  Opps.  Got a little overexcited.  That means we have a full set of Bean plants, and we even had to move a few to their own spots.  The Cucumbers are starting to climb the fencing, and the Corn is coming up on 2 feet.  Things are looking promising.  Woo-Hoo!

Flowers

The Rangoon Creeper or Philippine Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow vine took the Feature this week.  Yes, this is a vivacious grower that will take over wherever you plant it.  So, Caution.  It’s taking over the Pepper Bush on the undeveloped portion of Our Garden.  The small flowers come in clusters opening at night in the lightest of pinks.  So light they shine white in the moonlight.  As the flowers mature, they turn a bright pink before settling into a vivid deep red-pink.  Best of all, their sweet musky scent wisps  through Our Garden attracting the Butterflies.  Woo-Hoo!

The 3rd round of Flaming Torch Bromeliads came up strong, if not overly abundant.  The beds were more dotted instead of filled.  Doesn’t make each giant bloom any less amazing.  We’re just spoiled.  The Purple Queen is growing and blooming like crazy, attracting all the Bees.  Another round of the Pickerelweed is popping, and the new Zinnias are coming in strong.  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.