Tropical Gardening Ideas

Tropical Gardening is our passion. We love growing fruit and vegetables in the tropics. This page is a resource for the novice backyard gardener living in the hottest and most humid part of the planet.

The biggest difference between gardening in temperate regions and the tropics is the seasons. As opposed to the four seasons common in Europe and the US, in the tropics there are just two seasons. That is the ‘wet season’ and the ‘dry season’.

Tropical Gardening Plants

The basics of gardening are the same wherever you live. You need soil, water, fertiliser and time to care for your garden (e.g. weeding etc). However, people from other climates move to the tropics and battle against the conditions. They want to grow all the food they are familiar with. Therefore it is better to grow fruit and vegetables that thrive naturally in the tropics. Fortunatley there are a variety of tropical fruits and vegetables to choose from.

Tropical Fruit

Some of the tropical fruits to grow include paw paw, custard apple, black sapote, passion fruit, guava, kumquat, rambutan and Jaboticaba.

There are also many fruit trees that originate outside the tropics, but nevertheless thrive here. Most notable of these are a number of citrus. Consequently, you will come to love all the many fruits that thrive in our warm and humid conditions.

Tropical Gardening with Vegetables

It is also easy to grow tropical vegetables, including sweet potato and cucumber. Tropical gardening allows for Asian Greens like pak choi and tatsoi. You can easily grow pumpkin at home. However, many vegetables can only be grown in the tropical winter. This is due to the intense nature of summer in the tropics.

Tropical Gardening with Herbs

We have also looked at herbs that can make it through a hot steamy tropical summer. We have listed some of the wonderful tropical herbs you can easily grow in your garden.

It is well worth having a container to grow herbs such as thai chillis, coriander, basil, stevia, garlic chives and Vietnamese mint.

Tropical Gardening and Sustainability

In this age of Climate Change, it is more important than ever to live sustainably. This is another great reason to grow your own food.

The distance which food travels before it is consumed is described as ‘food miles’ or ‘food kilometres’. The greater the amount of food kilometres, the greater the amount of fossil fuel consumption.

To minimise climate change we have to minimise this fossil fuel consumption. Growing as much food as possible at home (close to you) is an obvious way to minimise food miles and assist in the fight against climate change.

Another benefit of gardening is that you can save money. These goals often go hand in hand. For example composting at home is great for the environment and saves you money on fertiliser. Consequently, this page is aimed to help you towards these goals. So join us and get gardening in the tropics!

Grow Indoor Plants

In addition, we love indoor ficus plants. They are great for air-quality and offer other health benefits as well. As a result, we have a passion to persuade you and others to grow indoor plants as well.

Tropical garden designs Queensland

Getting it right means getting two important things right. It means planting at the right time of the year and planting the right seed.

We tell you what grows best at certain times of the year. This information is also available from the gardenate website. Simply fill in the appropriate field to find out the best time to grow where you are.

However, we are going one step further and finding out what varieties or cultivars of plants do better in your tropical food garden. Hopefully this information will help you, but feel free to let us know your experiences, so that we can build a bigger common wealth of information for everyone.

Tropical Gardening

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