Hello everyone! It’s incredible 2026 has come and now we’re already into February! How are you doing, friend?
Whether you’re still floating on the excitement of the new year, or starting to lose some momentum, I just want to encourage you! Each day holds so much potential. Let’s use each one wisely, for the glory of God!
I’d love to hear what you’ve been working on!
This year is starting a bit different for me. Some time ago, I shared some about my goal setting journey on the blog… This year, I felt the urge to step back a little and instead of “planning for the whole year,” I’m just focusing on the season at hand.
I have a few projects I’d like to make progress on in this first quarter of 2026 (and I’m so thankful to already see some of that taking shape, slowly but surely!)…but I also want to hold these things loosely. It seems very right this year. I desire just to be here where He has me and learn how to be more faithful with what God has put in front of me, looking for and giving Him thanks for what HE is doing through it all!
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While it’s still winter (and according to The Groundhog, will be for several more weeks 😉 ), the growing season is already starting to stir! So far, my mom and I have been working on starting our pepper plants, eggplant seeds are in the sprouting stage, garlic is braving the elements in the garden, and we just got our onion starts in from Dixondale Farms on Monday!
February seems to be the perfect time to share some garden takeaways and highlights from last summer. Last year, during this “cozy dreaming” season, I wrote some about what I hoped to implement in 2025… so, let’s see how that played out. It’s a lot of fun to think back over how things went, look at photos, and get inspired for this year’s garden! Thank you for indulging me. 🙂 It makes spring seem not that far away.
In 2025, our garden wasn’t as beautifully kept as the season wore on—but even with that, it was amazingly productive! Here are a few observations, successes, and hopes coming from our season…
1) We Could Focus on a Smaller Space
My brother so kindly brought his tractor and helped us plow up some of our garden area, which was fantastic. We got a little carried away with what we asked him to plow and, as it turned out, we ended up deciding we had more than we could manage!
We planted white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and melons in some of the extra space outside of our established garden from last year, and actually didn’t even get around to planting everything we had prepped.
We’re thinking it may be beneficial to focus on a smaller area this year. (More on that in a future post, Lord willing!)
2) Fences and Beans
We had much less critter pressure this year, perhaps due to our neighbors being more active with outdoor projects. It’s been a blessing! We did use a netting fence around our sweet potatoes and electric wire around some green beans as well. The green beans seem an especially tempting menu item!
It was especially exciting to collaborate with my brothers’ families and pitch in together on growing a HUGE patch of green beans at my brother’s place. (Thank you, I+K!) When they were ready, we picked them several times as a group, then split them up. All the households had plenty for fresh eating and canned or froze around 50 quarts apiece. What a blessing! We grew “Blue Lake” bush beans (though we are wondering if the seed was mixed with another variety as the beans had different characteristics than our favorite Blue Lakes). We also tried a long row of “Superior Blue Lakes” and definitely found them to be very nice beans – they are worth a try if you’re scouting for a new green bean!
3) Caging and Trellising Update
Caging the tomatoes went very well. We used t-posts and metal rods to stake the posts in place, and where we had a shortage of those, we used some boards to tie them together. We didn’t have any trouble with them falling over and with a well-mulched walkway, it was easy to pick our tomato crop.
And the new arched trellis worked perfectly for growing sugar snap peas and cucumbers! We were thinking we could also put lettuce under the arch to double up on our space, but found it didn’t worked very well. Not sure if it was the amount of sun or just the soil health in that particular area. We might try something different with it this upcoming season.
4) Eggplant Update!
You know I mentioned discovering eggplant as a “new favorite” vegetable? We were excited to have a lovely crop of it and have plenty to enjoy! We grew “Long Purple” and “Florida Market” varieties.
I have seeds starting for this year and am hoping to focus more on the “Florida Market” eggplant, as a larger, more standard variety.
5) Jungle Flowers
Okay, here’s an example of our weeds out of control as the summer drew on – most of our flower area turned into a dog-fennel-jungle! But between here and our front flower garden, we still had plenty of flowers to create bouquets to enjoy! This is one of my favorite things about the garden. ♥
Here’s a bouquet with daisies, rudbeckia, bachelor’s buttons, penstemon, salvia, catmint, larkspur, and looks like some radish blooms tucked in. 🙂
It was exciting to see the cockscomb do well this year and to save seed from one of my favorite celosia colors – peachy pink that blends so well with the summer flowers! ♥ I also tried growing chamomile and had a few blooms, but it whet my interest to try again. They smell so delicious.
6) Unexpectedly Successful Crops
Our spring carrots did outstanding – the best ever! Also, I was excited to have a lush stand of parsley, after many failed attempts in the past! It was a blessing to chop and freeze the carrots and dry the parsley.
7) Melons – Anywhere and Everywhere
We have a large pot of pink impatiens by the corner of our carport where we like to gather to eat watermelon in the summer. Well, last year, some watermelon seedlings sprouted up from our pot! We enjoyed training one of them around the metal support and watching tiny little watermelons forming. Though it was not very big, we did get to pick and enjoy a watermelon from our carport plant and it was a fun illustration of how you don’t have to have much area to grow some of your own food! This little melon was shining in its small corner, for sure. 🙂
For the main melon supply last summer, we collaborated on a large melon patch with my brothers’ families and enjoyed so many delicious melons! We also planted some “Yellow Moon and Stars” watermelons at our garden, and a new variety of cantaloupe that I do not recommend. “Hale’s Best” and “Edisto 47” seem to be holding their place as the tried and true cantaloupes here!
So, what’s up for this year? Well… one of the biggest takeaways in our gardening journey last year came in the form of a new bit of perspective we’re excited to bring into this upcoming growing season. And I look forward to sharing more about that next time, Lord willing!
Until then, I look forward to hearing from you! What projects are a part of your cozy dreaming? How did your garden come together in 2025? Are you setting goals for the season ahead?
Thank you for reading!
Because of Jesus,
Maggie ♥
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