Tree Frog Tropicals

🍒 Surinam cherry plants available!!

In Brazil they call them pitanga. Many folks who grew up in Florida call them Florida cherries. Whatever you call them, they're good to eat! Like little pumpkin shaped water balloons filled with juice that burst when you bite into them. They're sweet, a little tangy, and super refreshing. There's an undertone that borders on savory. It sounds weird, but they're addictive. Two years ago I ate hundreds of them - I know because I planted every seed. Now I have super vigorous and nice sized plants available for just $20 each. They're ready to plant! These are seedlings of a special rare variety called "Zill's Black" which produces a darker, sweeter fruit. The color may or may not be retained, but all the offspring I've tasted still had that great flavor. This is a quickly maturing plant that could begin to produce in the next couple of years.

People associate these with South Florida, but they grow well in Gainesville. My mother tree took a hit this winter when I got down to 18F (it snowed at my house🥶😭) but it's coming back bushy and full of leaves already. There's some big old trees on the UF campus, that tells you these will survive. I haven't had any issues with pests or disease either. I think this is a great plant to produce abundant food for you and your family.

Showing off my bananas like men with fish on tinder 🍌
It's been hectic as I scrambled to get my 💩 together in preparation for the earliest freeze Gainesville has experienced since 1954. Completely overhauled the greenhouse and dug up some big trees out of the ground and bonsai'd them with a chainsaw to make more space for new plants.

I also had to take the time to prop cuttings of a lot of things so they'll be ready for you in the spring! Jamaican cherry, tropical apricot, peanut butter fruit, ice cream bean, chaya, katuk, water leaf, salad tree, and more.

And now we're back to highs in the 80s. Florida is wild like that. But my plants are looking better than ever as I've refined my processes for producing them. Come buy some and help me make more room. Zill's black surinam cherries, peanut butter fruit, an assortment of jaboticaba varieties, cherry of the Rio grande, miracle berries, ubajay, and more are ready right now.

Passionfruit liqueur:
1 part "Purple Possum" passionfruit ... Plants available soon!! 🌱
1 part Everclear (sponsor me 🤠)

Now we wait. Maybe a few weeks.

[Then make your simple syrup, boiling:
1 part water
1 part sugar
Let it dissolve, then cool]

Then strain your passionfruit mixture, and mix 1 part passionfruit rocket fuel and 1 part simple syrup.

Enjoy chilled, over ice, with a splash of soda water, or in a cocktail 😋

No time to make a reel or even a more aesthetic photo. But a pile of freshly harvested homegrown bananas is great to see regardless. Big Cold is coming tomorrow night, so had to take down the last of this season's racks. They'll be back next year. But I don't like the cold, I belong in the jungle. Wake me up in 3 months 😂

These nam wah bananas are probably the best ones to grow here. Big beautiful plants and super sweet fruits that taste like bananas mixed with strawberries and a hint of green apple. Why aren't you growing them? Buy a plant!

Bro discovered growing your own.

Ready for this weekend! Come get some plants 🌱💚🐸

See you this weekend, I'll be there as always with lots of cool plants you didn't know you needed 💚🌱

Miracles are real, and they grow on trees!

Meet the Miracle Berry (Synsepalum dulcificum)!

This little red berry from the tropics of Africa contains a very special compound - a glycoprotein called miraculin! It binds to the sour receptors of your taste buds and blocks them, temporarily making sour foods taste sweet! Eat a few berries, coating your tongue with the juice, and for a while you will be able to bite into lemons and limes just like oranges! A squeeze of lemon juice in a glass of ice water will taste like sweet lemonade from the county fair. It will enhance already palatable fruits - a normal pineapple or kiwi will become the sweetest, most delicious one you ever tasted, as if it was soaked in sugar syrup.

The possibilities don't end there... Plain sugar free Greek yogurt will taste sweet like vanilla! People throw "flavor tripping" parties, experimenting with all sorts of different foods, seeing how the flavors are affected.

The berry itself has a very interesting and pleasant taste. Extremely hard to describe, and sweet but in an unfamiliar and unusual way. These plants are cold sensitive, but are extremely well adapted to keeping in a pot their whole life. This was my first ever edible plant, which I've had for nearly 10 years. The one that started it all! It now stands about 5 feet tall in a ~7 gallon pot where it will stay for years to come.

Plants available 🌱

First ripe dragonfruit of the season. These are so much sweeter and more flavorful than the beautiful disappointments you usually find at the store. It's always better to grow your own. Cuttings available!