Once you pin down a particular property that you are interested in, contact the local state water district concerning water use/management regulations in that area. Don't just contact the county. We made that mistake here, the county and the state don't communicate each other's policies with the landowner and one can override the other, in particular the state can have regulations that the county doesn't have any control over.

Hi anywhere in central & Southern Florida can be prone to flooding.The further south you go the lower the elevation in general.I have surveyed properties in Miami with a floor elevation of 6ft above sea level,which means the yard & road sits at about 4ft.
For your acreage,I would definately ask the seller if they have some type of survey that hopefully shows some elevations on the land & surrounding areas.You don't want to be the low piece of land,so that all the water drains to you.Look to see if there are any drainage ditches/canals around your site-these can be great for irrigation use(You could use a satellite picture for a check if you have an address).
Lastly check the survey,to make sure if you are buying 5 acres for example,that the land is actually 5 acres & make sure there are no huge easements running through the land(especially something like a utility easement,which means the power company could clear a 100ft wide area & put up a power line right through your land).If you have a road/track or canal adjacent to the property,then expect to see some easements for those-that is normal.If the seller can't show you a survey,then I would be very cautious.Hope this helps & best of luck

I would want to be working with a RE broker extremely familiar with farmland to have bases covered.

I'm going to be nosey here...

Have you farmed before? Where? Are you interested in organic or standard farming? Florida is a VERY different place to grow anything.

My best suggestion for you would be, since your income is not tied to any one place, to come here and live and explore for a year or so. That would let you really get to know your area, how farming is done there, who the local brains are, where the local resources are and so on.

I was just in a local Asian grocery and they had a tropical fruit for sale 2 for $7.00!!! The name escapes me. Brown, avocado shaped and brown sugar taste. Yummy! Did not buy any. Too pricey for me.

Good luck to you in your venture. Let us know how things go for you.

Veronica

"fertile" farm land and Florida don't hardly go together in my mind. Maybe up in the panhandle or the drained everglade muck. Is the outskirts of Naples in the muckland?

If you want fertile farm land, go to Punta Gorda or further east out highway 17. You won't be as close to the Gulf, but there are tons of old cattle farms out there they are breaking up into 5-10 acre lots and selling. Cow poop for years = great soil. Naples is sort of a snotty area, if that's what you're looking for, plus the land is exorbitantly expensive compared to other areas. There weren't really many "farms" around that area, so the land is probably just pure, Florida sand...very hard to grow anything in, unless you are going with citrus. Naples is very upper-crust and doesn't take much to farmer types, unless, of course, you want to be a gentleman farmer who has someone else do all the work. If you really want to get into the farming area, go north a little and head out of Fort Myers toward Alva. East of Naples is too close to the Everglades, and has persistent flooding. Seriously, further north is much, much better, not that there is NO flooding and NO bad soil, but if you know your areas, you can find something really nice much cheaper than the Naples area and have much more success.

I do know that area suffered one of the biggest pops in the housing bubble. So Naples has probably been taken down a notch or two. A lot of those holier-than-thou types are now foreclosed on and exposed for being no better off than the average person... just willing to take on excessive debt.

I will disagree with the oft-told idea that pasturing animals for years results in a permanent increase in soil fertility. It is temporary, all the more so in over-drained sand. Not to mention that unless the animals are being fed very high-quality imported feeds grown on much superior soils - and that would have to be at a a very high stocking rate - there will be no net increase in minerals.

pnbrown -- I stand corrected, but it's got to be better soil than Naples! I used to live in North Port, and knew quite a few people in Punta Gorda who lived on old cattle farming land, and their soil was awesome compared to most sandy crap in that part of the country. This was grazing land, so maybe that made a difference.

I don't know SW florida at all well. Maybe punta gorda is drained land? Or for some reason varies from the perishingly dry and infertile sand that prevails in most of the peninsula.

Growing crops in florida is a discouraging project. You plant something, it grows ok for a few weeks if it isn't too hot and uses up the few minerals available, and then bang!, it hits that empty tank that is the top feet of sand and the crop croaks. Zero fertility equals zero drought resistance, the very thing needed most. Trees thrive because the roots get far past that bone dry zone, or they have some other adaptation to the conditions.

The grasses that persist without irrigation have that adaptation - they can tough out the dry period and do some growing during the hot wet season. Their net production of bio-mass though is very little compared to grasslands in other climates and soils. Florida's historical value as cattle-land is much less the grass and nutrition and more the fact that it is a big area that is warmish when other places are cold. Calves can be thrown and brought up to shipping age during the time when nothing would happen elsewhere.

Florida's state soil is Myakka sand- found only in the state of Florida and no where else.
Florida's sandy soil is by no means "crap" or " bad".
Plant things that thrive in our well draining soil instead
of trying to grow plants that need a different type of soil.
You wouldn't drive your Cadillac over my pastures just
as I would not drive my tractor down I-4.

This article explains this better than I can:

To the frustration of many gardeners, Florida's "soil" is mostly sand. This gray, fine soil, called "myakka," covers the majority of the state, and is in fact the official soil of Florida. However, soil properties can vary widely.
The soils of North and Central Florida are typically very sandy. Incorporating compost can increase organic matter and help give plants the moisture and nutrients they need to thrive.
In the panhandle, soils can be sandy or contain substantial amounts of clay. Clayey soils compact more easily and drain slower than sandy soils.
In the northern Everglades, soils tend to be peat-based and extremely fertile. If you live in this area, you may not need to amend your soil.
Finally, in extreme South Florida, soils are often shallow and have a high pH due to the influence of the limestone bedrock.
For best results in any soil, always choose plants that tolerate the site conditions.

Here is a link that might be useful: Florida Soils

Here is another quite interesting document, especially the maps. Note that florida has almost no prime cropland, and very little in the top 4 categories. And yet it has very high cash returns per acre, thanks no doubt to the nature of citrus.

Gatormom, not sure what cadillacs have to do with florida soil. I may have the advantage on you in being able to contrast the attempts in food production with various crops between florida and the northeast. There is no doubt that many traditional north american crops and methods do not work well in most of florida. You may have the advantage on me in observing food production crops and methods year-round over long periods in florida. As you intimate, I have no doubt that there are some crops and methods that do give a good return on time and inputs. Overall, I don't think any expert in the subject would suggest that florida soils are highly productive in comparison to most other regions in NA.

Here is a link that might be useful: low fertility

and this, another way big cash is pulled from poor ground.

Here is a link that might be useful: psuedo-tomatoes

I live near many tomato farms here in south central FL, and the psuedo-tomatoes fellow has it a bit wrong. It's true that they use the traditional chemical fertilizers and fungicides/pesticides. But that's not why the toms taste like @#*!!#. It's because they pick them before the toms have their "break-over". Which is when they release their internal ethylene ( if I remember the compound correctly) and begin to color up. The growers do this so that the toms ship without any damage; some are shipped loose in big semi trailers. I don't think the variety of tom has anything to do with the taste in this case.

I also grow toms in the same conditions, and I also pick them before they are ripe, but the two differences are: I grow them organically and I always wait until break-over before picking. They ripen from this green color with just a hint of yellow/orange (depending on the variety) in my kitchen, away from the birds who also love my toms when they are colored. And believe me, my toms taste FANTASTIC!

As for growing food in FL, I think it is a good situation because of the abundant water, warmth and sunlight; things that are not always present in places with more soil fertility. You will have to ammend the soil to increase the level of organics, and you will have to irrigate in dry times.

As for sterility, our soil often has good levels of phosphates naturally, and with the tropical storms and hurricanes we get lots of nitrogen from the sky.

I do recommend an organic approach though, and by this I mean utilizing and feeding the soil's bacteria and fungus. It has made worlds of difference in how my plants cope with the heat, humidity, and just they're overall health. But this is true no matter where you garden.

>psuedo-tomatoes fellow has it a bit wrong

What a charitable way to put it. :)

Right vehicle for the right driving surface equals right plant, right place.
Compare Florida soils with other Florida soils.
If you want rich fertile soils and ideal growing conditions, you have come to the wrong state.
rusticbohemian asked :
"Anyway, before I fly down to check out the land in person, I wanted to know if the land in general is fertile."
The answer is not necessarily.
There are some fertile spots in the state but overall Florida soils are not naturally highly fertile.
If you choose a sandy location, we got drainage covered!

I think it is fair to say that florida soils are not fertile. Not the way that word is normally used in relation to soil.

Someone who has been living almost entirely on the food they grow in florida sand, for years, told me that one cannot stay healthy doing that without importing minerals. I well believe it, based on the soil tests.

In the northern Everglades, soils tend to be peat-based and extremely fertile.

Hum, my grandfather made a living his whole life farming year-round, brought up fifteen kids one of which was my mother so I guess he did okay ;-) He farmed the summer crops on 80 acres he owned in Georgia, then came down to Opa-Locka for the fall and spring crops he grew on 120 acres he leased on the edge of the Everglades, so I guess he knew what he was doing. I remember consecutive years of amazing production but I do still recall a fair amount of inorganic fertilizer and supplemental dolomite.

V's point is succinctly valid, come down here and do your homework or you're headed for disaster if you think you'll be able to "supplement" your income here by this method.

Tom

Tom, I would hazard the guess that when your grandfather started using that everglades land it was a heck of a lot richer than it is now. It doesn't take many years of conventional farming to wreck such fragile soils.

I'm reading a book recc'd by Susie in Chokoloskee called "Crackers in the Glade" and the author remembers his father growing crops of sugarcane in Everglades City where his grandfather arrived in 1881 and never added any fertilization for 20 years after the first year. They canned up to 300,000 gallons of syrup. Everything he writes is from his personal knowledge but of course is anectdotal not scientific.

FWIW

Denise

Tom, I would hazard the guess that when your grandfather started using that everglades land it was a heck of a lot richer than it is now. It doesn't take many years of conventional farming to wreck such fragile soils.

I'm sure you're right, last crops I remember before he died were in the late fifties....

Another thing.. all that wondrous soil was made by the seasonal flooding of "the river of grass". All the levees and canals ended that decades ago.

Denise, that kind of farming was par for the course all over north america from virtually the first days of the massachussets bay colony and the virginia settlements right on until research in the early 20th century began to clue people about what was actually going on: mining the soil to death.

The dust bowl was the first big scary wake-up call in the US, but in truth ecological soil disasters have been following people around the globe for millennia. Generally they result in culture collapse and mass starvation. If Florida was a discrete nation with embargoes against it like those on Cuba, most of the population would perish of mineral deficiency.

pnbrown,

You are so correct on the missing minerals in Fla soils.
This is why I always recommend adding Dolomite to the planting soil mixture.
I buy the Texas Dolomite and also the New Jersey Dolomite which have the trace minerals needed for good plant growth.
I alternate applying the two dolomite year by year.
I also grind my eggshells to a powder and add that to my soil mixture.
The feed companies mix a finely ground stone into the chicken feed, the chicken innards dissolve it to make the eggshell.
Any mineral you can add into your growing medium will enhance Florida's poor growing soil.
It's not just about making compost for your garden, you need to add ALL the missing components of a loamy soil.

Lou

Lou, it's my understanding that dolomitic limestone (I think that's what you are talking about?) doesn't have a lot in it other than Mag, Ca and carbonate. I was thinking about this over the past spring while I was in fla and trying to come up with a preliminary mineralization plan. I came up with sul-po-mag as a way to add Mag without adding Ca (since my fields in particular and most florida sands don't need more), and of course K and S are much needed. Also I added borax for B, and Mn sulphate and copper and cobalt sulphates. I added theses to some large beds of mushroom compost to hang onto the salts as well as spreading large areas of pasture and citrus with those minerals mixed with humate from the jax region.

What kind of rock do they use in chicken feed? I think shells are mostly Ca carbonate, so it's probably limestone, once again.

I wish I could instantly transport myself for an hour to check on the sweet potato beds and compare the amended pasture growth with the unamended.

Importing all the ingredients for mineralized loam is difficult enough on merely small garden scale, it's quite impossible on a farm scale. Row-cropping in florida should be banished.

pnbrown,

Texas Dolomite is from ancient seabed limestone which I believe they said it has the traces of the ancient ocean greenery deposited in it as it was formed.

Another good source of minerals is Greensand because it supplies marine potash, silica, iron oxide, magnesia, lime, phosphoric acid and 22 trace minerals.
It's a boon for tomato lovers, because it has the 'vitamins and minerals' that tomato plants need to produce abundant, intensely flavored fruit

With my having been a prospector, I'm fortunate to still have(in many buckets in my barn)the pebbly sand left over after processing for gold and silver which I also use in my potting soil mixtures. This pebbly sand comes from stream bottoms and diggings that I've prospected all over this country adding many minerals not found in Florida soils.

Aw heck... now the secret of my potting soil is disclosed.

Lou

Lou, where do you get your greensand?

TY, Veronica

Veronica,

I buy it on eBay
40lbs for $9.95 plus $14.95 shipping

Guaranteed Analysis;

Total Nitrogen(N).............................0%

Available Phosphate (P2O5).............1.00%

Soluble Potash (K2O)....................5.00%

Iron (FE) minimum........................10.70%

Sulfur(S)........................................0.05%

Magnesium(Mg)..............................1.80%

If I drive to get it locally, I think it was $10 to 12 bucks plus tax for each 10 lb bag of Espoma brand they have at the stores, also the gas it takes me for 30+ mile trip.

Lou

I agree, greensand is mighty good stuff.

Thanks, Lou. Just found the big bag locally for $30. And within a 10 minute drive.

There are several factors you need to consider if you are planning to buy you have to consider the total space you are buying depending on your plan on how many animals are you going to raise or what kind of plants you are going to grow, flooding is also an important factor to consider as well as the watering system of the land

Here is a link that might be useful: Chicken Farm

Hi
Since the original post is almost 8 months old Was curious if you bought the land and how it's working out??? gary

I was wondering too Gary as I know someone who has a some acreage for sale in PG. Would be happy to pass along the info to rusticbohemian they are interested.

I've been wondering how someone from MA can speak with authority about Florida soils!?! This person is very misinformed.

North Florida has an abundance of fairly fertile soils, and some areas of Central Florida have good soils as well. Like anywhere else in the U.S. there may be some overfarmed areas, and also like many areas of the U.S. has good and bad soil. Most soil can be built back up with a few years of manures and composts spread on them. Areas with a lot of cattle benefit from a lot of "compost".

It takes doing some homework before buying land with the intention of farming.

I have areas of deep sand, clay, and loam on my land. I am able to grow a huge variety of fruit trees developed for lower chilling requirements. Pecans thrive here. Many vegetables do extremely well.

I love it here.

Did anyone notice that rusticbohemian posted this June 2011 and hasn't responded to anyone after the first post? lol
Just sayin.
Sharon