Texas Vegetable Garden

Having recently moved to a new house, I have an entire new garden to work with.

My former residence, a townhouse, had a postage stamp sized yard.  The new place (in Keller, TX) has a good sized yard.  I do have to work around a pool, but even so I have a lot more real estate to work with.

There are two good sized areas of lawn in the back yard which show a lot of promise for conversion to some productive (and fun!) use.  I have already began the process of converting one of these using a modified form of the ‘Lasagna Gardening’ method.

I hope to have some more updates on my progress posted soon!

I threw together this unusually delicious salad last night.   I am certainly no gourmet chef, but I thought it worth sharing:)

1/2 head of red leaf lettuce, chopped

1 tomato, wedged

1/2 mango, diced

1 appled, chopped

1/4 stick of celery, chopped fine

1 clementine, pulled into wedges

It tastes great without any dressing.  The Mango and Clementine juices seemed to fulfil that role!

I plan to talk about the construction of my raised beds in a future post, but today I will address the soil mix I utilized. 

The City of Plano, under a contract for the North Texas Municipal Water District, puts out a line of garden mixes under the brand name ‘Texas Pure’.  These products are largely created from recyclable materials that have been diverted from local landfills (a good thing!), and are produced locally.

The soil mix I have utilized in my raised beds is the ‘Texas Pure Soil Blend’, a great ‘pre-mixed’ 50/50 combination of quality (locally produced) compost, and a local soil mix.  At $4.50 for a cubic foot bag, the pricing is reasonable, if not cheap.  However, if you have a means of picking it up in bulk – which unfortunately I did not - then it is truly a great value at just $30.00 for a cubic yard.  The City also provides an option of delivery if you order 3 cubic yards or more (perhaps you can share it with a neighbor?)

I learned later, once I was finished with my initial round of landscaping, that the product is available at some of our local stores (such as Walmart and Elliotts Hardware).  I actually drove to the Composting facility and filled the trunk of my car several times before realizing this.  If you are in the North Texas area, and considering this product, do check your local Walmart before driving half way across the Metroplex to purchase it!

The product itself has a great look and feel to it.  I did try a couple of alternative soil mixes from Home Depot, and my gut feeling is that the Texas pure blend was superior.  I cannot claim to be a soil expert, but if I was a plant, this is the soil blend I would choose to sink my roots into:) 

If you would prefer a more scientific opinion on their compost, please view this US Composting Council report.

In summary, I would recommend this product for anyone in the North Texas region looking to build them a planting area from scratch.  It’s fairly priced, good quality, and locally made.  Not a bad combination.

The Texas Pure label also offers several other products (Mulch, Top Dressing, pure Compost…) for people with slightly different needs.  If you have tried these out please let me know what you thought of them!