One thing that I found helps a lot when you have to weed is a Hula-Ho:
 http://www.amazon.com/Flexrake-1000L-Hula-Ho-Cultivator-54-Inch/dp/B000UGOBSQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

It allows you to rip weeds out by the base in a matter of seconds without having to bend over, and I find it works all the better if you sharpen the edges. You just push down and use a motion sort of like a vacuum.

If you have a lot of mulch or use ground cover, though, you shouldn't have much in the way of weeds to worry about. Just be careful with the ground cover to make sure the roots can still get air and water - you want to kill weeds, not the tree!

I do this as part of my daily living. I have a white bucket in each sink, and 3 large buckets in the shower (they go in a row in the tub, some in front and some behind me). It's pretty simple. I keep the buckets under the faucets to catch any water. If I am using any chemicals, or washing off any "biohazard" that I would not want to put on my plants for some reason - which are organic - then I push the bucket out of the way so the water can go in the drain, and move it back as soon as the water is suitable again. For the shower, I just step out of the way or slide the buckets when they are full or when say I have shampoo or conditioner I don't want to get in there. I collect a great deal of water, and use it for my plants indoors and out. Sometimes I also wash clothes or other things in the shower while I'm collecting the water - things I only wanted to rinse off and didn't need to be immaculately clean.  If I collect too much water during a time say that there's rain, I dump the excess into my rain barrel, which has organic mosquito dunks in it so I can keep the water there for a while. I have not finished the rain barrel, which hopefully by the end of this summer will have a spigot and hose attachment, so then I can use it to water my plants directly with the force of gravity, without having to lug buckets of water around.

Here is a guide to building a rain barrel from the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority: http://www.fkaa.com/buildingrainbarrel.pdf

When you get used to it, it's really easy, and is a good way to conserve and reuse water and save a little money. I find it also helps to remind me to use as few chemicals in my life as possible - I only use soap on my hands when I need to do more than just rinse them, and I try to use products where possible that are pretty natural so most of the time I can catch the water. It's fairly rare that I let the water go down the drain - but for instance I have not been able to compromise on hair products, and those chemicals are harsh so I let them go down the drain. The thing you have to remember is to remove the water from the house and not let it just sit around, because that can encourage mold if you are in a humid area (but might help humidity levels if you're in a dry area) and gray water especially from rinsing vegetables or whatever can get bacteria in it quickly so you want to pour it into sealable bottles or other containers to save for later, or put it in the treated rain barrel outside, so you don't get anything bad in your air that you will breathe in, nor smells. Here in the Keys it will rain a ton for a few months, and then be exceptionally dry, so it's worth it for me to find ways to save that water safely for a month or so at a time because I will have way too much, and then way too little.

As an aside, I also never throw garbage - I compost or recycle everything I use, and am about to throw my first garbage bag soon in 1.5 years! That also turned out to be easy. Since I don't eat meat, the things that I need to throw away that I can't reuse, recycle, or put in the compost pile are very few, and they are dry things that take up very little space. Learning to compost was such a great thing to keep my house clean, and also to help my plants, because now I never have to leave rotting fruits or vegetables for instance sitting in a can until garbage day - I can freeze them, or immediately dump them on the pile and turn it over, with no smell or pests. I was very intimidated once by all of these ideas, but now that I've gotten used to them I think they're as easy or easier than the way I lived before!

This little fella fruited for the first time last year - gave us 2 or 3 fruits. Looked at it yesterday and it has exploded in flowers - just about the whole tree/shrub is covered in white flowers.

Is this in a full-sun location? Mine still looks healthy, but has not seemed to grow really at all in an entire year. I was expecting it to be a slow grower, but wow! Mine is in mostly (filtered) shade, so I'm wondering if it just needs more direct sun.

I used to have a lemon tree that I bought and fruited consistently in a 7 gallon pot. It was a very cute, and at the time, lush tree, maybe about 5ft high at its top point. It lived for years, and then my heart broke when I moved with it several times and an out of control heater in an apartment up North burned it to death. I was only 2 months away from moving back down to FL and planting it finally in my own yard.   But point being, they are not really that picky about containers, especially if you're not planning to turn them into 25-ft trees.

Since my lemon tree was on a brick patio with a lot of sun, having a lip around the base did help to keep the water in so I didn't have to water very frequently. If $ is a concern, you can just as easily construct one from some aluminum foil shaped around the base of the pot. Especially if you're planning to plant them in the future, I personally wouldn't go too big, because then you need a backhoe to dig the hole to put it in. You can keep trees healthy and small and still get fruit, all the more so of course if you intentionally buy a dwarf variety - but often that's not really necessary, they'll stay small if they don't have room to grow. I never had a problem with root-bound plants, you just pull the roots out and separate them before planting so they can grow fresh in all directions, and they grow in and take hold just fine.

Although your mom might want to kill you, another option you can consider since you live in a warm climate is growing some of them in your room. In hot climates, the sun tends to be brighter and you don't even need much direct sunlight. I use plastic bags, but plastic pots are also fine for cheap costs. Another trick I have learned with potted plants is that they LOVE packing peanuts. If you have styrofoam (NOT the green kind that dissolve, but the old-fashioned terrible for the environment kind), you fill the plastic bag or pot 2/3 full with the styrofoam pieces, and then fill the rest of the way up with a good quality (I use organic) soil. It acts as super-light rocks. Often when I go to transplant later, I find that the taproots of plants I grow from seed end up choosing to grow directly through the styrofoam - they seem to like using it as some sort of anchor, rather than growing around it. The styrofoam is great recycling, allows for a huge savings on expensive soil, makes for excellent drainage and oxygen to the roots, and makes the pots super-light to move.  I found this to be necessary because I buy a lot of my plants from Top Tropicals, and they ship with the old fashioned peanuts, so I have hordes of them.  (I also made a bean bag chair with them.) Another trick if you're not getting enough light to the plants is to wrap the insides and top of your container with aluminum foil, which reflects light from the window around every side of the plant. In my case, I found that the climate here is too hot and that was actually too much light and scorched my plants, but it may work for colder areas or parts of houses with low lighting.

Just keep in mind for indoor plants that too many, or too much watering, can result in mold in the house, which can make you sick and destroy the value of the house. Generally no more than you can line along windows is a good rule of thumb, and don't overwater. I have fruited things indoors, so it is definitely possible, especially in hot climates with a lot of sun. You can always harden off slowly and bring them outside later, to keep outdoors, or to plant.

I have used plastic bags that cost me pennies, and plastic pots that came with the plants. Check craigslist, a lot of people are giving away plastic fruit pots, or selling them for very little. I find plastic with holes work well for drainage, are light, and cheap. Heavy pots that are more attractive are often breakable, expensive, hard to move, and don't allow enough drainage or oxygen to get to the roots to make the plant as happy as the cheap containers. You can also punch holes in plastic for additional oxygen if you choose. 

This makes me very sad that the little seedling I bought died. I only had it maybe 2 weeks, and something in my yard ate it. I don't know what, as there are several pests that could be. I went to go find it in my yard to check on it, and all that was there was the skinny stump. It did not regrow since it had not yet established itself. Another $15 wasted... *sigh* I gave it a shot, simply because I was curious if it would do well here.

I'm not interested in eating fruit made from the dead body of my loved one. I cannot think of anything less appetizing.

I do however think it's a nice idea to grow a tree that you don't plan to eat, from a loved one's remains - whether from ashes or the body directly or whatever. But here in FL there might be the added concern that some trees that are vulnerable might upend in a hurricane, and then your bones get scattered everywhere if you did not use ashes. Planting a tree when someone dies is a nice idea, especially if it is an environmentally responsible one. But I don't want the association that I am in some way eating my relative's dead body, or the literal fruits of its decomposition. A nice tree that supports local insects or animals would be a good choice though.

Wow, "LivingParadise"! Thanks so much for all the info!!

Regarding a rainwater cachement system, it turns out our new house has a HUGE partially in-ground concrete cachement tank that must have been built with the original house back in the 60s or earlier.  The people we are buying the house from only use it to wash their car (!!!) I will definitely use it for all the plant watering and may actually connect it to the house itself.
Regarding invasive plants, we will be literally surrounded by mangroves with a driveway connecting the high ground to the rest of the Keys.  Along that driveway I noticed a tree that to me looked like what in California is called tamarisk (also a major invasive here) but from web pictures could be what you call Australian Pine. We'll get rid of it!  Definitely want to do everything for the local bees!! We tried the local mangrove honey and are now hooked!
Thanks again, and hope to hook-up when we get down to the Keys for good!

Happy to help! It's great news that you have a cistern already. There are some new rules about installing them so you also likely get to bypass that given that yours would be grandfathered in.  All houses on the Keys once had cisterns, since there was no running water, and few places to get fresh water other than the sky!

Not sure from your descriptions, but are you on an island or peninsula, so you need your own road to connect to the rest of civilization? If so, that should be a lot of fun to experience and learn about the environment, and also provide you some much-needed natural protection from the deer!

I'm sure From The Sea could comment better on how to protect plants from deer, since we don't have that issue here in the Upper Keys, but I wonder how well perhaps planting very thorny bushes around certain areas might help, or perhaps even building up piles of coral rocks around some plants. I realize there are rules about fencing, and it is extremely hard to dig into the rocky soil anyway. I am experimenting with my own types of natural barriers due to dogs, cats, and people roaming the very front and very back of my property where it is not fenced. I'm trying a combination of coral rocks, snake grass, bougainvillea, areca palms, dragonfruit, and other dense and spiny things to see what works in keeping things out. If I'm lucky, it will also keep out some iguanas! I am also growing some bamboo stumps right now that I hope to transplant to the ground soon in an attempt to create a natural fence. Perhaps deer would chew bamboo and stop at that, not trying to climb over and past it? It would take a lot of maintenance though, because I know bamboo can totally take over and become almost impossible to control in certain conditions. I'm not sure though, it might be too dry here for it to get out of control that quickly. So I'll start with a small planting to test it out.

Australian pine and Brazilian pepper are extremely difficult to get rid of. It is a struggle to drag the stumps out even with chains and a truck, and the ground is too full of rocks to risk breaking chainsaws. However, if the yard is small enough that you can keep on it, I have found that repeatedly cutting the thing down to its base will eventually weaken the roots enough to rip it out of the ground (they keep growing back even more vigorously for a while!). People will tell you all sorts of chemicals might work, but that is adding an even more noxious element to your yard than the original tree was! I am going to test the theory of poured boiling water on roots and stumps next, on a few of the more stubborn ones that have not yet died or been able to be ripped out of the ground after repeated stumpings. After I cut it to the base, I'll pour the boiling water, and then cover it with a black tarp for a few months. Some of these plants are in areas of my yard with lots of other trees where it is just too hard to get easy access to them by digging at the ground. There is another nuisance which I have yet to definitively identify, but which might be some sort of acacia. There are literally thousands of them in my yard, and they are very difficult to pull out of the ground, they constantly grow back vigorously when sawed off, and even tarping them for months has not seemed to harm them. My hope is I will finally be rid of them in a few years, once most of the seeds are gone given that I have now cut down the trees which were large enough to bear pods and drop them all over my yard. Neighbors have also cut theirs down, so we may finally stop their total takeover of our neighborhood!

A note to prepare you, BPK of course has its own ecosystem, but here in the Upper Keys there are a number of things that attack me every time I do any yard work. I have two different species of fire ants, and they are in every part of my large yard and also climb on the trees. I am fortunate not to be allergic yet, but they are so tiny it is nearly impossible to avoid being bit, and every time I am I don't sleep for a week. Brazilian pepper and poisonwood are like poison ivy and no fun, and can even be fatal to those allergic. We also have scorpions, although they are not fatal for most people. Nearly every day I work in the yard, I encounter one or the other, or get scratched half to death by bougainvillea! Taming a yard that has been left to run wild for over a decade is hard work! I personally at least have not had much trouble with snakes, and the bees, wasps, and crocodiles seem to have much better things to do than to bother with people.

You will probably have loads of fun here. Despite how hard it has been, I would not choose any other place!  But these are just a few warnings since moving here can be a huge shock!

Since you have so many mangroves, you may also have a hard time with mosquitoes. I have heard that Mosquito Magnets work really well, and from time to time they are sold on craigslist here. I am currently experimenting with making simple organic mosquito traps to see how effective they are. Now is not the season to be sure though since it is so windy and dry compared to summer. Any of us who are in places where we can grow lush tropical plants outdoors must also contend with the mosquitoes that come with such an environment, so any means of easily getting rid of them are a good thing. I have citronella planted in various strategic locations around the yard so that if I forget bug spray or need reapplication, I don't have to go all the way back up into the house to get some - just rip a piece off and rub it on my skin. Quite a few of the plants here are good for bug bites, or for preventing mosquitoes. Key lime leaves are also supposed to be good for that, as long as you won't be in direct sun because the acid can cause a burn. Mosquitoes are not attracted to strong plant scents! But they do like the color black, and the scent of carbon from one breathing hard while digging a really tough hole through the rocks to plant a tree!

I get a lot of my stuff in homestead, no need to speak Spanish just need to find the younger people that work at the nurseries.

The deer are the biggest problem I have here.

 

To clarify, I didn't meant that one needed to speak Spanish to get along in Homestead, but only that speaking Spanish seems to garner the best deals when purchasing at one of the nurseries. For the most part, they are large operations that are not set up for individual single-plant buyers, and rarely have anyone on hand who is there to accept visitors from the public. The ones I have gone to you have to wander around to find someone working, and then I noticed when speaking English they might quote a high price for a tree, but if I speak Spanish I get a much lower price offered. These places I have gone to are more set up for mass purchases, so they don't have prices posted on anything nor customer service people. Since the drive up to Homestead is going to cost something in gas and car wear-and-tear from BPK, it seems to me only worth it if you can get a healthy tree at a really good price! I find it too much hassle to haggle with people and try to find rare specimens, so that's why I've usually preferred to just ship them from TopTropicals. An example of price difference with Spanish though, is one 7-gallon Lemon tree I bought years ago was initially quoted to me as $75 in English. When I started speaking Spanish, all of a sudden the tree was offered to me at $40 because a cultural rapport was felt. So I think it's a definite advantage.

I'd like to grow some bananas, a mango and a few other exotic fruits - kind of make one side of the house be a "jungle orchard".  Where is the best place in the Keys to buy fruit trees?
Thanks and I am really glad I found this forum!

Welcome! I have found that nurseries in the Keys are generally very overpriced, and have very little knowledge. Often they have no idea what they're growing, or may mislabel things. It's rare to find one that knows anything about what cultivar of a plant they have - generally the best they can do is "Banana," "Mango,"...  If you know Spanish you will do well to haggle with the nurseries all around Homestead (make absolutely sure to check out the Fruit & Spice Park, and also 'Robert Is Here' Fruit Stand!). Home Depot does not really cater to our climate, so they will sell a bunch of things that need a much colder climate than we have, or that will waste away the moment they hit our coral soil. [Also, be aware that Home Depot uses pesticides that get into the very cells of the plants that are known to kill honeybees, so even if you have an organic home and plant these plants and bees come to pollinate, they will die anyway.] Local nurseries and Home Depot will also sell plenty of plants that are invasive and very harmful to our fragile ecosystem here - so look up every species online before you buy to check for its invasive potential, so you don't harm the local environment. Native plants - even endangered ones - can be found in local nurseries as well as in Homestead and are very cheap, though, so a little research into that is a good thing, as it will help keep bees and a wide range of other living things (endangered species included) in your yard.

For a huge variety and the ability to ship directly to my house, I have bought a great deal of my trees from Top Tropicals, which is in FL so shipping does not take long or go through cold zones. They have mixed reviews here, you can research it, but for the most part they have a wide selection of rare and special plants and I have mostly had good luck with them. Wait for holidays when they have their sales though, because costs and shipping really add up fast! My experience has been that plants on clearance are cheap because they are nearly dead, so not worth the money they cost.

Outside of a few trees that you need to be full size or nearly mature from the beginning, I would recommend starting things from seed. You can buy seeds or seedling plants of tons of things on Amazon, as well as Etsy, Ebay, and on this forum. This keeps costs low and lets you experiment until you know what will work here and what is worth the effort to you. As I mentioned earlier, in this first year of growing I got hit with an onslaught of various pests and problems (one single plant that has a disease or pest can quickly spread it to your entire yard and wipe it out before you know what hit you!), and I do wish I had taken it more slowly to have more of a handle on care for each plant. I was in a rush for various reasons, and it's been exciting and in some cases it will mean I have mature fruiting trees that fill in my landscape much faster than if I had waited, but you should pick and choose your battles with the items that are most important to you first.

Aside from problems with the soil and water, rats, iguanas, and for you Key Deer, etc, you'll have to contend with our unusual climate. We are far drier than the rest of FL - actually the driest county in the state! - and we alternate between dryness that actually causes brush fires, to sometimes multiple feet of rain in a month (in one June in the 1960s there was a total 21ft of rain!)! It never freezes, but these other factors do limit what naturally does well here without a ton of water waste and endless work and setbacks. On the other hand, some things absolutely flourish here with no help, and I am continually surprised by the things that I've planted that have done well, versus the things that have died under the strain of pests and other factors. Sometimes it's just a matter of the individual plant, and I've found that in my yard, plants that grow from seed (again, often things you wouldn't expect) do much better than trying to transplant a seed. I guess this is because the seed started out used to the conditions of the soil and weather and so is just the kind of seed that will do well - sometimes I have an abundance of seeds from things and just give them a shot in the soil on their own, and the full trees of the same plant that I am giving tons of care and every advantage wither while the lonely seedling continues to grow. Of course, how well they will fruit remains to be seen. I await the time when we have a bad storm to see whether all of this work and money was for naught in the long run! Hopefully not. Since you're in a low flood zone, be aware of things like salt tolerance, flood (and drought) tolerance, and protection from wind. In most years, these ratings will be enough to save your plants. But of course we can't do much to prepare them for hurricane force winds and waves, outside of some careful planting techniques.

A few things I grow in pots/bags on my balcony and indoors, for that reason. I hope not to be completely wiped out in any one season. It is very easy to grow fruiting plants indoors here, since the sun is so strong - I have fruited watermelon, strawberries, peppers, and other plants indoors here.

Some plants that you may already know of but that fruit well here are:

Coconut
Banana
Mango
Mamey Sapote
Black Sapote
Passionfruit
Guava
Lemon
Lime
Calamondin (all of these citrus may have problems with the soil, but so far I have had no problems and have had plenty of fruit)
Papaya (be careful to plant non-GMO only), and be sure to pick them all as papaya are invasive if not)
Tamarind
Pineapple
Barbados Cherry
Surinam Cherry
Starfruit
Pygmy Date Palm
Feijoa
Dragonfruit

And with some extra help...
Guanabana
Pomegranate
Avocado
Muscadine grape

Invasive, grow only indoors:
Guava
Strawberry/Cattley Guava
Sapodilla

Good Fruiting Native Plants to consider:
Wild Coffee
Bahama Coffee
Beautyberry
Cocoplum
Seagrape

If you're interested in growing vegetables as well, you will do best with tropical vegetables which are better known in other countries. Few plants that are well-known in the US can handle the summer heat here - they wither and succumb to whitefly, etc.

A list of native plants in the Florida Keys can be found here:
http://monroe.ifas.ufl.edu/lawn/lawn_keysguide_sec4.shtml

Here is a Gardening Guide for the Florida Keys:
http://monroe.ifas.ufl.edu/lawn/lawn_keysguide.shtml

If you find any Australian Pine or Brazilian Pepper in your yard, please remove them as these are highly invasive and are rapidly destroying the fragile Florida Keys ecosystem.

Consider a rain catchment system if you're going to plant anything that cannot withstand the droughts here. It's best not to use any tap water at all, from an ecological and financial standpoint, as well as the health of the plants. Our fresh water is extremely limited in Florida, and in the Keys it must be piped in from very far away. You can get organic mosquito dunks on Amazon for pretty cheap to prevent the water from harboring mosquito eggs. Here is the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority's guide on making a rain barrel:
http://www.fkaa.com/buildingrainbarrel.pdf

I realize this is a lot of information, but I wish I had had this info when I moved here a year and a half ago! It has been an extremely steep learning curve.

Well, as luck would have it, my sweetheart has one single branch blooming, I wonder if it heard me threaten it a couple of weeks ago while I was looking it over :-) Anyway, now the vigil begins to watch for more blooming, and fruit set.

That's wonderful - congratulations!

Thanks for the reply - did you see it in bloom, or with fruit? I have seen that the fruit was supposed to be fuzzy red drupes (maybe like sort of a peach/plum cross), but when I search for images there are a lot of pictures of brown fruit. I'm not sure if these photos are incorrectly labeled, or if the original description is incorrect.

Would be interesting if I ever get fruit from a tree no one else here has ever had the opportunity to try - I could post photos and description of flavor. But that would likely be in a few years... given this lack of information, I certainly have not seen anything that states how old Guiana Plum needs to be before it fruits!

Anyone in the Caribbean or Central American region seen or tried it?

The Keys actually get less rainfall than any other county in Florida (much to my dismay to have discovered). So I am planning to replace the lawn the previous owner installed with sand in some areas, and purslane in others. Purslane is edible and actually extremely healthy for you, needs no chemicals for management, and is extremely drought-resistant. It is easy to buy large quantities of seeds for very low prices. Sea Purslane is larger and is salt-resistant (although I don't find it nearly as pleasant eating as the regular purslane). The variety I am planning on using is Toucan Scarlet purslane (Portulaca Oleracea Toucan Scarlet Shades), which I already grow in a small quantity in a container. It does not grow very tall, has a pretty green color, and has beautiful reddish orange-and-yellow flowers that are close to a half inch in size. When spread over the ground, the entire yard becomes a sea of green and these beautiful red flowers - plus if the yard has no chemicals or pet waste on it, it is entirely edible, flowers and all! A no-maintenance yard, with beautiful color, and also useful - hard to get better than that!