Winter Garden

Garden Journal Week 1

Just to recap: we bought our home in April 2022, moved in in mid-May after our son had spent 6 weeks starting the renovation by working on things like ripping up the carpet and pulling all the cheap flimsy paneling out. It was far too late in the year to consider trying to garden here in North Texas - we live in the Rolling Plains ecoregion, the cultural region called Texoma which, as you might guess, borders Oklahoma. Our growing zone here was recently declared zone 8a (average low of 9F) but while that covers most winter expectations, our summers are more zone 9, with highs up to 114F and no rain for weeks or months at a time. It is a very challenging place to garden.

And yet… and yet. I cannot simply let it go, I must garden. I decided in 2023 I would start work on what I intended to be a Texas Cottage Garden, in keeping with my heart and the style of our house. I wanted to combine native plants and domestic in my garden, to make it as fruitful as possible in my region. I began planting in earnest. I had the drip irrigation lying in the yard ready to install when I stopped to care for my husband who, thankfully, survived a health crisis. The watering system did not go on, and the vast majority of the 2023 garden died in the long hot months of summer. My attention was needed elsewhere, and I have no regrets.

I began to plant again in January 2024. On the 27th of the month, in point of fact, as that is a special anniversary for me, and the rebirth of the garden seemed like a good idea to begin then. I planted sugar snap peas, and they grew and produced. Last year I planted shrubs, trees, perennials, installed the drip irrigation for the hedgerow filled with fruiting trees and bushes, and with the help of our son got new raised garden beds in for the vegetable garden. A friend helped me get in the last two big beds in late summer, completing the vegetable garden hardscape. Summer was chaotic, most things survived (the big losses of the year were the two peach trees and a lovely Salvia greggii which all drowned in the spring rains where we had several inches dumped on us in a single day, and my soil is heavy). Fall never really came, but I was determined to plant the last parts of the planned trees to allow them to establish over the winter. At this point, then, in the tenth of an acre of arable land I have to work with, I have:

• Pecan (one immature and one mature, was here when we moved in)

• Redbud (mature and same)

• Elderberries

• Blackberries

• American Persimmon (native)

• Passionflower (vine)

• Peach (rootstock)

• Apricot

• Olives (Arquebina)

• Yaupon Holly (native)

• Pluots

• Pomegranates

• Figs

• Crabapple

• Apple

• Blackcurrants

• Golden Currants (natives)

• Methley Plum

• Mexican Plums (native)

• Pears

• Jujubes

• Loganberry

• Marionberry

• American Beautyberry (native)

• Giant Fuyu Persimmon

• Strawberries

• Grapes

Most of the trees will be pruned to no more than seven feet in height - in other words, no higher than I can reach - or trained to espalier, step-overs, or fans. The food forest is well on it’s way. Or, if you like, the ‘fredge’: a fruiting hedge around the front yard and down next to the driveway. The backyard is heavily shaded by my huge pecan, and a bunch of hackberries which are in the fence. This is a good thing for my veggie garden.

Which brings me to the winter garden, and current time. This year is going to be less about getting the major investments in, which is what I was doing last year, and more about making all the adjustments and tweaks to make my garden more efficient, taking less time to care for it, and having a real harvest from the garden this year. It will also be the year we turn the enclosure which held a hot tub, then a chicken coop, into a little greenhouse.

With this in mind, I’m starting to test my boundaries. Not of my physical ability, although that’s already less than I’d like, but the garden is part of my exercise regime. No, the boundaries of what I can and can’t grow here. In theory, with protection, I can garden year-round here. The winter garden is testing that, with peas, carrots, radishes, and beets all sown several weeks ago.

Last night the temperatures plummeted, accompanied by very high winds. I didn’t hold out much hope that the floating row cover would stay put over the two beds of the Winter Garden, but after the first few hours I refastened where it had come loose, and in the morning it was still in place. As you can see, the bed is self-mulched with fallen tree leaves, and the unirrigated plants are doing very well even without additional water. I do plan a drip system for this bed, but it hasn’t yet been installed. When it warms up a bit.

I’d placed the long bed under the old laundry lines on purpose. I can and do use the remaining cable as part of the trellis system for climbers like the peas. I’ll finish mulching soonish - you can see where I’ve laid cardboard as part of that. My goal is to eradicated the Bermuda grass from the property, but I have no illusions about keeping it out, as it will come back from the neighbors. Only in the front yard is it isolated enough to get rid of it and have a hope of establishing the native buffalograss.

For the next couple of weeks I’ll be more focused on keeping the indoor gardening going, the citrus in the garage warm enough to survive (with the added incentive that there is plumbing in the garage to protect from freezing as well), and starting seeds to be ready for the end of January and the next round of planting out, into the winter garden and a little cold frame.

I may not have blooms in the garden with the arctic air swinging down and through Texas, but I can have them inside with me!

I picked some things the cold were going to kill (and this Iris is too young to allow it to bloom so much, yet) and will enjoy them for a time.

And I cheated by buying orchids in bud, so I could watch them unfurl into their strange beauty and enjoy them in flower for a month or more. Cheaper than cut flowers if you count it by the day, with the promise of flowering again, in a year if I can keep them alive!