Welcome, to our zone 8a garden!

This is where we play and practice. A 1,000 square foot garden on black gumbo clay in North Texas with one goal in mind: abundance. Every year, and each season, we see the goal grow closer as hard work and good practices are layered in place. In the spring, it is home to plastic diggers, dumpers and fresh loads of compost. The peas spring up, and the chill comes and goes. Summer brings warmth, and the plans jump in size and production. This is when we sweat; a lot. Midsummer here is quite like winter, and we pause. Come fall, we take to action again, prepping for the tunnels that will hold things all winter.

Each season, we share the new seeds, techniques and ideas we are preparing for the next. Reflection on new obstacles and successes intertwined with next year's lofty plans. Join us as we share the realities of new gardens in a non-gardening state, suburban neighborhood during the early years of child rearing.

Our vegetables and flowers are grown on a 1,000 sq. ft. raised bed plot on black gumbo clay soil in North Texas (Zone 8a). We broke ground in the spring of 2021 shortly after we moved out of the "big city", as our toddler calls it.

The goal? Abundance. Fresh eating, enough to store, and plenty to share. But even though our book knowledge (and YouTube knowledge!) is abundant, there is no teacher quite like experience. She's a young garden, and the reality is that our land is old cattle pasture turned residential neighborhood. Growing good dirt is our first step. We've been lucky to grow a few veggies and flowers, and life lessons along the way.

In 2024, we completed our first rotation of all our main crops. So far, the added compost, natural supplementation (fish emulsion, blood meal, chicken poop) and rotation of crops has caused the garden harvests to multiply each year. We are still organic, no dig.

This was also the year we created a three foot mulch border around the garden to reduce the push mowing and bermuda grass problem that plagued us. We also invested in our first perennial fruits and vegetables, which we added to raised beds where we had previously rotated onions and garlic. These included: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and asparagus. There's a blackberry patch in our front yard due to the amount of flooding our non-bordered garden area experiences each spring.

As of the fall, we have a tilled area we tested with sunflowers (no success) that we have tarped. Goal is to have a separate area for sunflowers, pumpkin and watermelons during the summer.

Here's What's Been Growing: