Starting my Tropical Food Forest journey

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:03]Hello YouTube.

[00:00:05]Um, welcome to my channel. I'm just starting up this channel to document my my journey through my my food forest and um I'm in central Florida and I we just had a freeze this winter so I have been watching the recovery between the plants and I have a mixture of flowers and native plants and uh fruit trees along with a bunch of edible uh spinaches and um different things like cassava and monstera and also just some some beautiful plants like this uh orange bird of paradise.

[00:01:11]But it's been interesting to see what made it through the freeze. I have a Bangkok lemon jackf fruit that did amazing. It's just starting to uh push out new growth.

[00:01:28]And then this is one of my favorites.

[00:01:30]This is a Maria Black avocado.

[00:01:39]And then I always love the blooms of this Pride of Barbados. It's just coming back, but it's just going to hopefully flush out a bunch of flowers.

[00:01:57]And then I also have a bunch of native plants. This is a necklace pod. It is beautiful.

[00:02:05]It's one of my favorite natives.

[00:02:09]It has these pods.

[00:02:13]You can see these are the seed pods. They'll um look like uh white flowers, but um I'm going to spread more of these around my yard. I love it.

[00:02:27]And then I also put in a bunch of native wild flowers and seedlings. This is a orange crush seedling uh jackf fruit that my friend gave me. Shout out to Dan.

[00:02:46]And then I also love all of these beautiful flowers. The This is sweet almond.

[00:02:54]It smells amazing.

[00:02:56]If you don't have one of these in your yard, you should get one.

[00:03:02]And then I also have some variegated guava that's coming back. This uh seemed to do well through the freeze. It's just uh it's going to come back and flower hopefully soon. And then I also have some moringa.

[00:03:21]And this is uh my royal poniana. I just use this for shade for the moment. I know it's going to get pretty big, but um it's not going to be a long-term uh plant. Uh but I I use these to shade out my my plants because it's just so so tough in the in the summers. And then I also have a a chupa chupa.

[00:03:48]um it needs to establish itself. It's been newly planted.

[00:03:55]And then there's a a lipstick uh tree or I believe it's called a aoteote.

[00:04:05]And then bunch more flowers.

[00:04:09]I have a uh variegated sapadilla.

[00:04:14]Um, this one I believe is a mild variegation, but um it's uh I love the leaves of this. It's so beautiful.

[00:04:25]More flowers.

[00:04:27]And then I also plant some custard apple seedlings. Uh these are coming back after after the freeze.

[00:04:37]And then I have some candlestick cassia or senna.

[00:04:43]Some more maringa and then some Mexican pepper leaf.

[00:04:52]All these bugs all over. I love seeing all the nature.

[00:04:58]I also don't uh use any pesticides or herbicides.

[00:05:02]um use a little bit of chicken manure uh from my neighbor, but um uh overall not any uh uh store-bought fertilizers or anything like that. And then I'm also pretty big into bananas. So this is a um a big mic um I believe growl.

[00:05:27]Um it's starting to come back from the freeze. You could tell it's a grow Michelle by um I don't know if you could see the the leaves or like it has this like reddish tint to it. I don't know if you could really see it, but it's really really beautiful banana. I haven't tried this yet, but hopefully this is going to be my first year. I also plant some other things like um this is a screw pine. Uh again, this is more of a a shade uh plant. Uh I don't consider some of these long term, but I also have this um I guess more wet area in my yard. So, um I'm planting more big leaves to uh or sorry, I guess uh plant things to soak up all the water. And now it has not had any water problems ever since I started this.

[00:06:31]And then I also have a giant white per of paradise.

[00:06:36]Hopefully shading out some of this uh area in the backyard.

[00:06:43]Then I also love to grow um white sapote.

[00:06:50]I don't know the particular variety of this one. It was um sold as a good variety. Um and so far it's probably one of the best looking ones on my property.

[00:07:05]And then I also have a um couple more.

[00:07:09]Uh, this I believe is a Bonoa Springs and I believe I have a Redlands.

[00:07:19]And then there is um I put some Simpson stopper there. The The birds love this.

[00:07:29]And then I'm so happy about this. This is coming back.

[00:07:33]I have a cropia or gummy worm fruit. It is coming back from the roots. I had to trim it back. It was uh started dying.

[00:07:46]So, um I just uh cut it back until it was not no longer um I guess mushy.

[00:07:54]And then I'm so happy about this as well. I um did not plant this. This is some beauty berry that some birds planted in my yard. I've been trying to grow this and been so unsuccessful, but I guess nature just does it on its own.

[00:08:14]And I used to have rainbow eucalyptus, but that got hit back in a freeze. So, and then I also have some mulberry cutings. This is from also from my friend Dan. Uh this is just a cutting stick stuck it in the ground. I've already gotten some mulberries for it.

[00:08:34]If you want something quick, get a mulberry tree.

[00:08:39]And then also starting to have some sugar cane popping back up.

[00:08:47]I harvested it in the fall, but uh it's looking nice.

[00:08:52]And then I have a meer lemon. It's starting to um grow some a lot of it's starting to take off really. This is one of the first things I planted. I got it at a box store, but um but yeah, it's uh surprised that it's been alive for this long. So, I'm just going to continue to have it go in. And then I also have some lobster claw halakonas. Those are so beautiful. used to close off this fence line, but again, it was uh it's all this right here is my uh from all the freeze. So, I also use all my cutings um as mulch. I never uh throw it off my property.

[00:09:46]And then this is just a uh dwarf cavendish. Um, I got this. Um, I guess this was my first banana uh until I started learning that there's other ones out there.

[00:09:59]And then, uh, this is a Kohala longan. Starting to get some longgin.

[00:10:09]So, I've I've tried this last year and I only got like one or two of them and it's so amazing.

[00:10:18]And then I'm so sad about this. This was my large cacao tree. I planted it probably about two years ago and it was really nice looking and uh I don't think it's coming back.

[00:10:34]And then this was also a hard one to take. This was my seashore mango steeen.

[00:10:41]But if you look down here, I have some new sprouts coming back. So that is very promising.

[00:10:52]And then a Chinese orchid or not Chinese, a Chinese perfume tree.

[00:10:59]And then I also have a canistel. This was newly planted. I got to take care of this a little bit more. It's getting a lot of sun. As you can see, not everything loves it. But down here, like this is the area that's getting the sun, and then down here is starting to So, I might I might prune it back a little bit because I also messed with the roots a little bit. So, it's never a bad thing to get the roots uh clean um and make sure they're not um twisted up. And if they are twisted up, don't be afraid to cut the roots. And um but if you're going to cut the roots, also trim back the plant. So um I mean it's not going to uh love all of that uh the leaves, especially when it is a um struggling I guess. Then I also have a gold finger.

[00:11:58]I love this. I tried that last year and it's one of one of my favorites. But the all-time favorite is this uh Mona Lisa.

[00:12:08]This is a top producer in my yard. I've already had like three or four racks from it and it is so good. If you don't have a Mona Lisa, I would definitely recommend getting one. And then uh it's a June plum. It's starting to starting to flower a little bit, but it's starting to come back. It was uh I believe this is the dwarf one because it hasn't gotten really large.

[00:12:36]And I also love to plant flowers along for the pollinators. So this is was was a drroa, but it's uh um just going to sprout back, I guess. And then I also have a butterscotch sapadilla.

[00:12:56]I don't know if people call it sapidil or sapadilla. I always um go with the Spanish sapadilla because this is a double L, but I don't know. Are you telling me?

[00:13:12]And then I also have um a Brazilian cloak. This is just from a cutting. So I I'm just planting a bunch of flowers.

[00:13:22]Everywhere I can fit something, I just put flowers and plants and everything for the pollinators. And then I also put some Mexican sunflower uh as chop and drop um for for everything.

[00:13:39]I have some sernom cherries.

[00:13:45]And this is also beautiful. This is a a viex or a chase tree.

[00:13:53]This has beautiful flowers, very fragrant.

[00:13:58]And then coral honeysuckle.

[00:14:03]And this got a little bit uh died back in the freeze because it's right in my north side of the property and everything came through from this.

[00:14:13]The wind came through. So uh but starting to grow back. I got some more avocados.

[00:14:21]A bunch of flowers, more pride of Barbados, some um fire bush, and then this is one of my favorite.

[00:14:37]This is a Hong Kong orchid tree. It has some pink flowers that basically look like orchids and it's pretty amazing.

[00:14:48]And then so yeah, um just sharing a little bit about my progress so far. I'll be sharing some more. This is only a piece of my yard.

[00:15:00]So um I'm definitely going to put more and uh see how everything goes and share the journey along. And if you like this, then you should um follow me along as well.

[00:15:19]So hopefully everything starts to shoot back up and grow more. It used to be I used to have a large canopy on it, so looking forward to getting back to there. All right. Well, thank you.

[00:15:39]Thanks for watching.