I'm Growing Dirt

My garden is looking a little different. The tomatoes are coming out. Not because they're sick. Not because they failed. If you've been following along, you already know why I'm hitting the reset button for fall.

But what happens next is the part I'm even more excited about. I'm planting pinkeye peas and green beans. Most people think of them as dinner. I think of them as little farmhands.

They're going to spend the next several weeks working for me, quietly helping rebuild the soil after a long season of feeding hungry tomato plants.

I don’t fully understand all of the scientific specifics, but good old country farmers always teach that you plant peas after tomatoes. Tomatoes pull a lot of nutrients from the soil and peas and beans help put all of those nutrients back for the next year’s growing season.

Good old country folk just call it gardening. I'll be a little bougie today and call it by its proper name: regenerative gardening.

All year I’ve asked the garden to produce and now I have to ask myself, what does the garden need from me? If I take care of the soil, the soil will take care of me.

Healthy soil isn't something you buy in a bag. It's something you build.

Which brings me to my second gardening habit that usually raises a few eyebrows…I use hay. Not dyed mulch. Not shredded bark. Just good old-fashioned hay spread thick across my raised beds.

I know you are wondering, why hay?

Because in the middle of a North Texas summer, my goal isn't to make the beds look pretty. My goal is to protect the soil.

That blanket of hay shades the ground from the brutal Texas sun, slows moisture evaporation, helps moderate soil temperatures, and gradually breaks down into organic matter that feeds the soil. I don’t worry about spending a lot of money on fancy organic mulches. I just buy a bale of hay. You will be surprised how far one bail of hay goes in the garden. It’s A LOT!

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The worms love it. The microbes in the soil love it. My garden loves it. And my water bill REALLY loves it!

Some gardeners chase bigger harvests by buying another fertilizer. I'm trying to grow something even more valuable. Better dirt. Because every incredible garden begins underground.

The tomatoes, peppers, beans, and squash are just the visible result of thousands of tiny things happening beneath the garden surface.

Maybe that's true outside the garden, too.

The strongest things we grow in life usually begin where no one can see them. A garden teaches you that every beautiful harvest starts with a whole lot of quiet work underground. I think our lives work the same way. The moments that shape us most are often the ones no one applauds, no one photographs, and no one even notices. But one day, the harvest tells the story.

This fall, while everyone is looking at what's growing above the soil, I'll be smiling about what's happening below it.

Because next year's harvest doesn't begin next spring. It begins today.