My god, how many mangoes is that, like a thousand?

I would definitely guess some thinning may be necessary so all the branches don't break off!

Can only hope for the day when my mangoes will produce half as many! Two are just starting their first fruiting year now (Mallika and Maha Chanok).

Yeah, I use plenty of mulch so I don't have to use too much of the city water. I am setting up a rain barrel system, but not done yet, because I definitely have more water than I need in the rainy season and could use more in the dry. This year has been evenly spread though, I've only had to water twice and that was because some of the plants were just planted. I'm sure it will get pretty dry at some point from Feb-May, as last year was a dry nightmare.

I have a ton of leaves in my yard, LOTS of pine needles from the neighbor's trees, plus palm frond mulching (I have an electric mulcher), and plenty of small tree branches too, plus I compost, so I have plenty of things to add to the soil and to cover up the ground with to keep moisture in. I am constantly adding new things to the ground, and as I said there's a lot of stuff that piles up on the ground from surrounding plants, so the first few inches are very dark soil. Obviously not so much the deeper it goes, but hopefully if I keep adding things it will keep them reasonably happy - and many things I planted are native or do well in high PH, so quite a few things in the yard aren't that finicky. I have learned that we Keys residents can get access to tons of free seaweed via craigslist, and some are saying that it does not even have to be rinsed and has made their plants happy. So I will be looking into that eventually, to see if it can help supplement my soil for free. Not sure how to transport it without stinking up my car though. Apparently there are plenty of waterfront people with manmade beaches that want to get rid of it once it washes up dead onshore. Do you have any experience with this? I would love to hear how it goes, and how best to make use of it!

I'm glad it was the Maha Chanok that flowered first, since I've still never tasted one in my life and Robert's Is Here up in Homestead does sell Mallikas in season so I've had a few of those. **I've noticed something funny about this forum, that it seems to automatically correct my spelling of Maha Chanok when I submit the post, because I am spelling it C h i n o o k, which is how it's spelled on its tag, and yet when I post my message and read it back it shows up differently! Must be some type of autocorrect the moderators put into the system for some species?

Anyway, I'd really like to hear tips if you have any on how to successfully grow organically in the Keys, as like I said many plants are doing fine now but it was a very difficult first season to get everything to recover from all the pests that seem to be here. And yet some things have been thrilled with the soil and had no troubles at all, like my Noni, some of the coffees, the candle tree, etc.

Also is it completely impractical to dump billions of gallons of rainwater from places that get a surplus of rain (like Florida) into the ocean when it could be piped to areas with a rain deficit.

This is misinformation. Florida is dealing with an impending water crisis. The state continues to grow while - although we are surrounded by salt water on 3 sides - we have dwindling sources of fresh water. Moreover, all the chemicals people are dumping on plants that do not belong in the area because they cannot survive here, in addition to the over-watering of impractical landscapes, has caused a serious problem with chemical runoff poisoning our sources of fresh water (treatment cannot remove all of those chemicals), and also destroying the wildlife in our ocean and fresh water bodies. The state does get a lot of rain during the rainy season, but as is in the name, we get so little rain in the dry season that there are often wildfires - especially in SFL (where the majority of the people are).

The idea that Florida gets too much water is grossly incorrect. We have water restrictions because we have far too little to spread out over a year, given the population we have. And that population keeps growing every year, and dumping more and more chemicals into our ground and water, and creating more and more completely unsustainable landscapes.

I agree with the idea to ramp up water prices over a certain usage per household to an exponential level, to raise money for the state to try to address the problem, and to discourage people from using so much.

I am obviously obsessed with growing fruit, but I try to grow things that can do reasonably well in the environment in which I live, and those that require more, I only grow within the limitations of what I can provide through gray water. I have containers at every sink, and in the shower, to catch all water that does not have chemicals in it for reuse on my plants - which I grow organically. I also have rain barrels outside which I treat with an organic anti-mosquito additive so I can try to hold over as much water as possible to get me through the long dry season. Some plants I grow in containers with water-recycling trays underneath, because they need moisture too frequently to do well in the ground here. I put them in a column one on top of the other, and when you water the top, it waters all of the plants with the same water, then recycles to the top to start again - that uses a lot less water than traditional methods for containers, and the plants seem happy.

Thanks to some help (!), I finally these up. This is a mangrove wetland next to a neighborhood just a few miles North of me. It is on the side of the Gulf of Mexico, facing the Everglades not too far away.
What it normally looks like, and what the recent drought did to it.

I give up. I added the photo repeatedly, and no matter how many times it says it uploaded, it's never there. Just picture deeply cracked mud with dried-up mangrove branches arching out of it. A completely dried swamp that looks like desert floor.

This is great info!

I have a mini-garden growing in my house now, but it's a lot easier than it used to be up North, because I have plenty of sun, warmth, and humidity naturally now - and I also have more space.
 
One thing I have wondered about with indoor growing when you really devote an entire room to being a greenhouse, which is more than I have done as yet - do you see signs of damage to the house? Mold in the room or in your air ducts? Paint damage? Warping of floor boards?

As of now, I grow many vegetables indoors because it is more convenient in a lot of ways than growing them outdoors for me - I can control the conditions a lot better, check them closely for pests, and prune them as needed much more frequently. But, I'm not at a point where I am willing to sacrifice my investment in my house (or my health in terms of mold), for my indoor gardening. So after several years of what looks like an entire room devoted to high-humidity and well-watered gardening, have you seen effects on the room or house as a whole?

As a kid I used to dream about having an indoor pool, and my entire house would be a rainforest indoors, with sunlamps on the ceilings, a pet parrot flying from tree to tree, and grass on the floor too! But then as a teenager someone crushed that dream and said the humidity and chlorine fumes would destroy the house. I'm still not giving up on the dream though, someday I'll find a way to make it work! (Or at least maybe the pool part, if I get to stay in SFL I have the tropical feel outdoors now to keep me satisfied.)

Benefits of the drought:

*Digging for planting is made a lot easier - I dug more than a foot down today to put in my figs and the entire way, massive rocks aside, was like dust.

*Slightly less humidity, making the early morning digging ALMOST bearable.

*Far fewer mosquitoes.

*Clear starry nights. Those are not common in the rainy season. They are beautiful!

You've just described monsoon, which occurs in Asia every year! Not surprising that the plants that do best in Florida are from India (mango and jackfruit), where it goes from bone dry to non stop rain for 3 months.

Exactly - except that I think monsoons come from patterns formed by mountains (?), which we sadly have none of here. So, semi-monsoons.   The terms rainy and dry season are certainly apt here, otherwise it would not be as easy to distinguish seasons. The best part about it, though, is that even while Florida does suffer a mind-numbing lack of elevation variation, and even while the rain may dominate every day for months, the clouds rarely cover the whole sky at once. So it is nearly always sunny while it rains, and rainbows are frequent! It's also common for it to rain on one side of the street and not the other! The comment earlier about the clouds affecting people up North is certainly true, sunny rain is certainly a lot better than 10 months of solid cloud cover, although the North has its own kind of intense beauty.

Poured rain yesterday!  Got 1.79" in the rain gauge.  Supposed to have heavy storms every day through Saturday.  Hope you get some rain soon and im hoping it doesnt rain too much here!

Congrats! Still nothing way down here, and chance of rain is forecasted at 10% for the next week. The following week right now is forecasted at 20%.

I was just thinking the same thing yesterday, here I am praying for the rainy season when probably all the tourists and normal locals are having a great time in the endless sunshine snorkeling and boating. I am trying to remind myself to be patient, we don't have much time left to go, and there may come days when the wish comes true a little too much. Hurricane season is not exactly something one should wish for. But I guess this is how plants survive here naturally, they manage a little drought in the dry season, and then flourish in the crazy rainy season. It is yet another reminder to keep to native planting wherever possible. I have a few species native to the Keys which I am looking forward to testing the fruits of! They need rain too to fruit, but they can live through drought much better.

Some of them are: Fuzzy passionflower (Passiflora multiflora), Wild Sapodilla ("Wild Dilly"), Florida mayten (different from regular common mayten), a few different kinds of stoppers, Beautyberry, Willow-bustic,  etc. etc. They may not be the best eating, but many of them are endangered, and they all have edible fruit. Many are also medicinal. They don't need any special care or extra watering to fruit in season, and very few people on Earth have tried them, so that at least makes it special. Looking forward to a few months from now when I hopefully will be taste-testing endangered Keys fruit! It will be a good consolation prize if many of my non-native species are still trying to recover at that point so don't produce this year...

So, here is the next round. I find this so confusing, because I have little fern-like trees starting up all over the lot, and I also have several full-grown trees.

Here are some of the pods remaining on the ground. My concern was that the seeds might be too small, but maybe they just didn't get a chance to get large enough because no one was tending the trees? Then again, maybe these are something else...  It's hard to tell because I don't have any fresh pods to look at.





Here is a little seedling next to a pod:






Here is another one near the tree with the pods - I'm sorry the picture isn't great, my camera broke and I am waiting for a new one to be shipped to me, so these were taken with my cell phone, which is incredibly hard to focus and take a decent picture with:





The tree the pods came from. Again, very hard to get good pictures, because it's really tall and sticking through a canopy of other trees, so distinguishing features don't start until high up. If you look carefully toward the center of the picture you can see a dried pod still hanging:





In another shot of that same tree, unfortunately blurry, you can see some pods still hanging off to the left:





That tree was the only one in my yard I personally witnessed pods on. Here is a different tree in another part of the yard that looks similar though, also very tall already (maybe 20ft?):





And another one, in yet another spot, which weirdly is growing arched sideways like a bridge (don't know if the previous owner did this on purpose?) - the trunk of it is in the center of the picture, you can't tell but it's actually arched over a fence, the picture is right-side up, the left side with the lowest part of the trunk is actually the TOP of the tree!:




I have my hands full IDing all the plants on this property, as the lot is quite large and no one who has ever owned it has really maintained most of the jungle. Only certain parts right near the house were landscaped and plants put in intentionally, the rest is all wild. I had just assumed when I saw the pods high up that the one tree was tamarind, and then when I got all the seedlings everywhere just assumed they were also. But this is the first time I've gotten a chance to really look at any of them close up, and now I'm not so sure. I don't think the tree with the pods is the same thing as the plant with the balls, but it's hard to say when everything is at a different stage of growth. Although tamarind could be tasted to see if the leaves are sour like the fruit, I don't think a taste test of a strange plant is the best go-to option!

I sympathize! Here in the Florida Keys it has gotten so dry we had a large brush fire which closed a road for a bit. The temperatures are making their annual soar but the rain has not come with it, and it has already been dry for months. My potted plants want water 3 times a day now, and even putting palm mulch on them seems to make no difference. It's too much, especially for someone who has hundreds of plants still in pots. So in the meantime, I am planting as fast as I can - which does help a lot - and the crankier of my still-potted plants protest by dropping all their leaves if I am literally a few hours late in watering them. Hopefully they will push out leaves again in a month or two, as have most of their peers who went through the same thing while I was learning that "full sun" recommendations do not apply to most plants the Keys (even after very careful hardening).

Plant drama... It's like watching a soap opera out there - and they always want to kill off the favorite characters in some sudden dramatic way! One minute they're fine, and the next minute I look another one has keeled over in the partial sun and I have to drag it with the other wounded into the full shade.

It is windy here too because it's an island, so that probably doesn't help, although the air is still very humid.

Best wishes for everyone's casualties to be minimal, and to heal quickly!