The Florida Keys spans USDA hardiness zone 10b — a zone band wide enough that plant choice, not possibility, is the interesting question.
A frost-free coral archipelago of thin alkaline soils where tropical fruit and container gardens replace conventional ground beds. Expect mango, tomato, orange, and sweet potato to be strong candidates here; the deciding factors on any one parcel stay local — soil, sun, and drainage.
The Florida Keys spans Florida.
Your yard isn't all of the Florida Keys.
The Florida Keys spans USDA zones 10b, but your parcel sits in exactly one — and slope, tree cover, and low spots nudge it further. Enter your address and we'll score 1,086 plants against your land's actual soil, sun, and frost.
We read public map data around Florida Keys — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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The Florida Keys — the short answer
The Florida Keys: USDA zones 10b, 365 frost-free days, in Florida.
- USDA zones
- 10b
- USDA PHZM 2023, aggregated over the footprint
- Frost-free season
- 365 days
- NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991–2020
- Counties
- 1
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Region type
- County cluster
- Growable Ground growing-region registry
Region boundary: Growable Ground growing-region registry — curated county clusters, EPA Level III ecoregions, and town clusters drawn finer than any county. Where a region publishes no measured season, no season figure is shown.
Hardiness Zone Range
What Grows in the Florida Keys
Plants matched to the Florida Keys' USDA zones 10b, ordered by how much hardiness margin each has across the region — the ones with room to spare at both ends of this band lead. Each links to its full growing profile.
Native Plants of the Florida Keys
Plants the USDA PLANTS Database documents as native and present in this region’s state, kept only where the published hardiness range meets the Florida Keys’s USDA zones 10b — closest range match first. Presence is recorded by state, so a plant can be documented across the state and still be scarce in your corner of the region.
The ground across the Florida Keys
The USDA soil survey maps this ground county by county. These are those records weighted by land area across one member county — this region’s own profile, not a state figure.
The ground is predominantly Histosols, at 45% of mapped acres, followed by Entisols (41%) and Mollisols (14%). The most extensive named soils are Keylargo, Cudjoe, and Islamorada.
41% of those acres are very poorly drained, and another 20% somewhat poorly drained, 11% moderately well drained. Topsoil pH runs 8.0–8.0 in that county’s own record.
Soil order
Histosols
Drainage
Very poorly drained
Topsoil pH
8.0–8.0
Hydric soils
68%
Soil changes across a driveway, so which of these your own ground sits on is a parcel question rather than a regional one. soil types explained.
USDA NRCS SSURGO via Soil Data Access
What this means for growing in the Florida Keys
The soil survey reads this ground county by county, and the readings above are those records summed across the Florida Keys. Here is what they mean for a garden here — and the move an experienced grower makes about each one.
Drainage
From county records41% of the mapped acres across the Florida Keys are very poorly drained — ground that sheds water slowly. That is area-weighted across its one mapped county.
Beds can stay saturated for days after heavy rain, and the roots of most vegetables, berries, and fruit trees suffocate or rot in soil that never drains.
Raised beds or mounded rows lift roots above the wet zone; choose water-tolerant crops for the lowest spots.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
From county recordsTopsoil across the Florida Keys runs pH 8.0 — alkaline in the one record covering it.
Many vegetables cope, but acid-lovers like blueberries struggle, and iron and manganese lock up above about pH 7.5 — leaves yellow between the veins even in rich soil.
Elemental sulfur and generous organic matter lower pH slowly for the beds that need it; test first so you add only what the soil actually calls for.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across the Florida Keys — and how to grow with it.
Across the Florida Keys' 1 county the federal record holds 587 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks (245), Brownfields (214) and Nitrate (118). The heaviest single county is Monroe County, with 587.
That is a regional count, not a reading of any one lot — proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis. Open the map outlined to the Florida Keys to see which records sit where you actually grow.
Sources Checked
Summed across the county in the Florida Keys
Know Before You Grow
- •Underground tanks leak petroleum as they age — near a former filling station, test the soil.
- •Near a brownfield, raised beds of imported soil give your food clean ground.
- •On a private well, test for nitrates: above 10 mg/L the water needs treatment before irrigating.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
Your land is one point inside the Florida Keys
Everything above resolves to the Florida Keys as a whole — a footprint spanning USDA zones 10b. Your parcel sits in exactly one of them. Slope, tree cover, a low spot that pools cold air, and what is in the soil are all resolved at the address, and none of them are visible at region scale. That is the honest boundary of this page, and the reason the next step is a reading of your own ground rather than a better regional average.
Your Lot vs the Florida Keys Average
Florida Keys Average
- ●USDA Zones 10b, averaged across Florida Keys
- ●One soil character for all of Florida Keys
- ●State-average frost dates
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Florida Keys' 10b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in the Florida Keys
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in the Florida Keys — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, contamination, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Florida Keys averages can't show:
We read public map data around The Florida Keys — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Florida Keys average
How we know this about the Florida Keys
The boundary: a cluster of neighboring counties. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one, and every figure on this page was measured over the counties inside it rather than borrowed from the state around it.
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, aggregated across the footprint; the growing season from NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS 1991–2020 28°F normals, read at each member’s own record; boundaries from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination record from the federal sources named in that beat above; the soil from the USDA NRCS SSURGO survey, read at each member county’s own record and weighted to this footprint by land area. Where a member carries no record of its own, it is absent from the figure rather than filled in.
Common questions about the Florida Keys
What hardiness zone is the Florida Keys?
The Florida Keys spans USDA hardiness zones 10b, aggregated from the USDA Agricultural Research Service Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023 across the region's counties. Zones reflect average annual extreme minimum temperatures from 1991–2020 data.
What grows well in the Florida Keys?
The Florida Keys' conditions suit plants such as Mango, Tomato, Orange, Sweet Potato, Banana, Jalapeno. What actually thrives on any one site still turns on its specific soil, sun, and drainage — we score each plant against the real conditions at your address.
How is the Florida Keys defined?
The Florida Keys is defined here as a curated cluster of 1 neighboring counties that share a growing character. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one — every county in it is named on this page.
Which states does the Florida Keys cover?
The Florida Keys spans Florida. Each state's full growing guide is linked on this page.
What other growing regions cover the same states?
Gulf Coast, Florida Panhandle, Northeast Florida, Southwest Florida (Naples–Fort Myers–Sarasota), Central Florida Ridge, and Everglades Agricultural Area share at least one state with the Florida Keys. Growing regions overlap and interlock — a single address can sit inside more than one, which is why the precise read is always the parcel, not the region.
What this page reads at the Florida Keys’s own scale
5 of the readings below were taken at the Florida Keys' own scale — the zone 10b band across its footprint and 587 documented federal contamination records across its one county, 587 of them in Monroe County alone; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- The USDA hardiness band 10b aggregated across the footprint's one countyUSDA PHZM 2023
- The boundary itself — the 1 county this region is curated fromGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The growing character that makes this region distinct from the states it crossesGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The federal contamination record over the whole footprint — 587 documented federal contamination records across its one county, 587 of them in Monroe County aloneEPA, USGS and USDA federal site records
- The soil order mix across the footprint — 45% Histosols, topsoil pH 8.0–8.0, area-weighted across its one mapped countyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
Inherited from a wider read
- The candidate plant list — its state's curated sets, merged and filtered to zones 10bfrom Florida
What this page can’t tell you
- Frost dates — they swing too far across a footprint this size to quote as one regional numberfrost dates explained →
- Which of those soils your own ground sits on — the survey maps them county-wide, and they change across a drivewaysoil types explained →
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on one specific lotwhy one lot differs from the next →
Explore the Florida Keys
State growing guides
Counties in this region
Other growing regions across Florida
The humid, near-frost-free coastal rim of the Gulf of Mexico — long seasons, sandy and alluvial soils, heat, and hurricanes shaping what thrives. (Representative coastal counties, not exhaustive.)
North Florida's mild-winter coastal plain of sandy and clay soils — a transition zone growing both Southern staples and subtropical fruit.
The Atlantic-facing northeast peninsula — Jacksonville, Gainesville, and St. Augustine along the St. Johns River — where ocean-moderated Zone 9a–9b winters and deep sandy coastal-plain flatwoods set a warmer floor and a tighter, earlier frost window than the Gulf-side Panhandle to the west (no genuine 8b interior here; last frost lands ~late January to mid-February).
Florida's lower Gulf coast — a near-frost-free subtropical corridor (USDA zone 10a–10b along the shore, dropping to 9b in the DeSoto interior) where mangrove shorelines, sandy and marl soils, and hurricane exposure shape what grows. Year-round warm-season vegetables and mainland tropical fruit thrive here on a Gulf-side footprint distinct from both the cooler Central Florida interior and the Atlantic shore at the same latitude.
The Lake Wales Ridge, a well-drained white-sand spine running about 100 miles down the Florida peninsula from Lake County south through Orange, Osceola, Polk, and Highlands, anchors this historic citrus belt in USDA zones 9b–10a with 323-to-335-day frost-free seasons.
The Everglades Agricultural Area is roughly 700,000 acres of drained peat-and-muck farmland south of Lake Okeechobee, defined under Florida's Everglades Forever Act (§373.4592, F.S.); its member counties span USDA zones 10a to 10b with a frost-free to 326-plus-day growing season, the deep organic soils behind the region's sugarcane and winter-vegetable harvests.