Understory Garden

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Leander, TX
Understory Garden

We are a backyard microfarm using sustainable practices to provide a unique variety of garden goods.

We offer gardening services to Leander and surrounding areas.

11/10/2025

How does your fall garden grow? We are blessed to have been very busy lately with harvesting and our little seed store. This is the time of year where the weather starts sending us inside to rest and reflect on all the joy and bounty in our lives.

Pictures show the Plant Daddy with one of several recent large roselle harvests, huge garlic cloves being planted, Tabasco peppers putting on a show, tasty turnips, purple basil being her usual beautiful moody self, and one of us on a little fall foliage appreciation trip to Arkansas. Now we are crossing our fingers for some cool weather to settle in for Texas!

Side note that comes with the season- If you're starting your holiday shopping, please consider supporting small business this year!

09/03/2025

As we’re transitioning to fall garden mode here in Central Texas, we just thought it would be fun to share some of the rockstars still going strong in our summer garden. Many of these aren’t commonly seen plants despite being easy to grow. All have food or medicinal value and are a blessing with our challenging growing conditions! We have seeds available in our Etsy store, https://www.etsy.com/shop/UnderstoryGarden

07/24/2025

Our summer garden is growing strong! Check out these Japanese Tiger Melons. They look like mini watermelons but they’re actually muskmelons. All of our melons, peppers, okra, and zinnias are really going nuts right now. We have been blessed to be very busy with our customers’ gardens lately, so we are grateful our own is doing well with minimal maintenance. Soil health, automated drip irrigation, and choosing the right crops at the right time is what it’s all about!

07/02/2025

We’re having a front porch plant sale 7/2 and 7/3 from 5-9 pm! Self serve with Venmo code on table. $3 each for tomatoes and herbs. Improved Celeste figs are six-month-old cuttings rooted from our own trees, $20 each. Please PM if you need to pay cash or need our address.

We have tomatoes for fall gardens! Did you know tomatoes make a fantastic fall crop? Many experienced gardeners in Central Texas actually find they do better in fall than they do in spring. It may seem odd to plant tomatoes in the heat of summer, but July is when they need to be planted for the best harvests when temperatures begin to dip in fall. Most garden centers won’t order tomatoes for fall gardening, so if you want some, come and get them with us.

We have many fun and rare tomato varieties to choose from, all grown from seed in organic soil. Most of these are our favorites we have grown for years in our own garden, and saved seeds from. Seed selection like this is often regarded as a great way of ensuring plants are more likely to be successful in a given area.

We also have African Blue Basil- one of our favorite companion plants of all time. It grows huge and beautifully bushy. Pollinators go crazy for it. It never goes to seed, so it will live for years if you overwinter it or take cuttings.

We have Moldavian Dragonhead Balm starts. This is an excellent and hard to find companion plant. Bees love it, and it makes a delicious tea. The flowers are shaped like little dragon heads.

Everything is hardened off and ready to plant. Thanks you for supporting our little garden!

06/16/2025

Things are getting a little jungley with all this rain! We have a lot of cool herbaceous action happening right now. The red flowering sages in our porch garden have been a lot of fun with watching the hummingbirds. We’re very excited about the valerian. I had a hard time finding much information regarding its heat tolerance. I didn’t know if it would make it here in the Central Texas summer oven, but it’s thriving in part sun on drip irrigation! Papalo has proven to be a decent cilantro alternative for hot weather. Bonus pics of the beautiful African Blue Basil at our neighborhood’s community garden. Bees go nuts for it and it never goes to seed!

06/09/2025

Tomato time! On multiple levels actually. If you’re in Central Texas and doing a fall tomato crop from seed it’s time to get planting. We have some beauties coming in from the garden. All of these fresh seeds are available in our shop, along with lots more of our favorites! Mention this post and I’ll include a freebie in your order ❤️

Link to our seed store
understorygarden.etsy.com

05/31/2025

Loving all the garden goodness right now! The rain and cooler temperatures have been a blessing. The garlic harvest was phenomenal this year, we’re swimming in beans, and we are in heaven with all the fun varieties of tomatoes!

Food forest update: it’s thriving! We are so excited for all the fruit trees and vines taking off! There’s figs, mulberries, elderberries, blackberries, pomegranate, and lots of peaches! The food forest is actually only about 10 months old so it’s still filling in. We can’t wait to see how it will be a year or two from now!

Can you believe the forest used to be a food desert of Bermuda grass? Now it’s an area working hard, full of purpose supporting both humans and pollinators. We’re using tons of native plants as companions with the food crops.

05/05/2025

Homegrown blackberries coming in heavy now! We’ve also been foraging wild dewberries. They’re only in season for a short window every year so if you haven’t visited your local berry picking patch time is ticking.

04/04/2025

We’ve had so many of our friends and customers reach out to see if we have plants available. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to offer any this year due to completely maxing out our grow room and greenhouse for our backyard garden and community garden.

But we did just start all these babies with the intent of having a little plant sale in a few weeks! We know the heat is right around the corner, so we kept that in mind with choosing these varieties.

Be on the lookout for:
Golden Jenny Melon
Crane Melon
Eden Gem / Rocky Ford Melon
Sakata’s Sweet Melon
Kajari Melon
Korean Chamoe Melon
Molokhia Egyptian Spinach
Rodale Red Amaranth
Lagos Spinach Celosia
Thai Red Roselle Hibiscus
Papalo
Red Epazote

03/20/2025

All of these crafted gourd cuties have been a year in the making! Last spring we planted several varieties of hardshelled gourd seeds. We harvested the gourds, cured them over winter, and now they’re ready to work with! I have a long list of things I want to make with these. So far I’ve made a lamp, some bowls, and a birdhouse.
This year we’re going to see what happens if we use them as a companion plant with pumpkins. We only plant moschata species pumpkins due to the extreme squash vine borer pressure here, but sometimes the bugs will still take the plants out. The borers don’t seem to touch the gourd plants, they’re actually in a different genus than pumpkins. They leaves have a faint odor that we have a theory may help deter pests.
If you’re looking for a useful vining layer in your garden that the bugs and heat won’t bother give lagenaria gourds a shot!

Address

Leander, TX

Website

https://www.etsy.com/shop/UnderstoryGarden

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