Climate Victory Garden – 2026

Estimated reading time: 23 minutes

(About the cover photo: Bertha the orb weaver, pictured in the featured image, was my unofficial research assistant last year, tracking which insects thrived as temperatures and seasons went wild.)

It’s that time of year again — time to plant a garden for food, for fun, for exercise, and to connect to the outside world we all depend on for everything. This article covers my adventure in gardening for 2025-2026, mostly in pictures, with some thoughts about the climate.

If you want to learn more about the impacts on climate change on gardening and by extension, agriculture in general, check out this post from year 3 (2022)

When you grow a garden you definitely notice the changes in seasons, and also get a sense of the changing climate. Things that I have noticed from a climate perspective over the almost 14 years of living in Houston, Texas…

• More intense rain storms
• Warmer winters with colder cold snaps
• Hotter summers with longer periods of intense heat (longer heat waves)

Let’s see what the data show…

Drought and Rain

My perception was that the rain is getting more intense. What I didn’t realize is that we are also suffering from periods of drought between periods of excessive rain. Looks like conditions in Southeastern Texas are a bit drier overall, but with increasing amounts of rain with each rain storm.

Extreme Rain?

My take away from the data — we get less consistent rain here, with small droughts punctuated by massive inputs. The infrastructure here was designed with a more or less steady state in mind, with well defined/predicted peaks. Climate change is altering the assumptions of the game, making current infrastructure inadequate to handle the changing conditions.

Summer and Winter Temperatures

I arrived in Houston in 2012. My timing was impeccable, as this coincides with a marked increase in annual average temperatures.

This next animated graph tells an interesting climate change story. I had my Ai, Perplexity.ai, chart all of the average monthly temperatures for each year for as far back as there were reliable data. Houston-Hobby is an airport that serves South Houston and is not far from where I live.

As you can see, not only is summer getting warmer, but the winters are getting warmer as well. If you look closely, you can see that the winters started getting warmer in the 1980s and 1990s, while summers got warmer more recently. In fact, four of the last 5 summers were record setting!

What does all this mean?

The two things that are most closely associated with increasing atmospheric temperatures are increases in extreme precipitation and extreme heat events. Extreme precipitation because the temperature of the atmosphere has a linear relationship to how much water it holds as water vapor. Warmer air holds more moisture. Warmer air is also… warmer. Duh. So hotter daytime and nighttime temperatures result, as well as hotter heat waves.

I think because Houston was ALREADY hot and humid, the changes are a little harder to notice — as long as a hurricane is not barreling down on the city. Already hot and humid air can only hold so much more moisture. However, more energy equals more energetic storms… higher winds, more moisture transferred from the ocean to the land, more extremes in general.

On a completely subjective note, the sound of the thunder has changed since I’ve been here too. It seems like thunder cracks are louder and roll on a lot longer than I noticed in the past. Either I’m just paying closer attention, or there’s something going on. More energy, mo bigger thunder. That’d be interesting to look into someday…

Sidebar: The graphics shown here were made by me with Perplexity Computer (Perplexity.ai) using publicly available NOAA and City of Houston data, unless otherwise noted.

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What follows are a lot of pictures of my Fall, Winter and Spring garden, from about late November to today, early May. Looks like a lot of tropical plants do well here. More and more into the future…

Late Summer – Early Fall Harvest – 2025

My only fig tree that is planted in the ground did amazing. And my other figs did okay. I finally put a cover on the fig tree to keep the squirrels away which seemed to do the trick. I had more figs than I knew what to do with. Also, got a lot of Cow Peas. So I have a big Mason jar full of them, and still haven’t eaten any. I hope they’re good!

Pineapple was the total surprise of the year. I had a pineapple top that I put in dirt year before last. It didn’t do much the year before other than die, but it had a pup that went on to grow big this past year and made a juicy pineapple. Now I have 3 pups growing. Another tropical fruit that seems to do well here. I did put them in the garage during the big freeze we had.

Also, the Xylie butternut squash was specifically bred to do well in hot and humid climates. It is extremely prolific and unstoppable. The gourds are starting to stabilize in their shape, as you see them in the photo. Really cool climate survivor.

Sugar Cane

Check out the sugar cane. This is an ideal plant for a sub-tropical climate like we have here in Zone 9b. I mostly planted it as a screen for that corner of the yard. It grows tall and thick, and you can eat it. Though it’s a major bit of work. I bought it on Etsy, which is a great place to get off beat plants that major seed companies won’t have.

Growing sugar cane is easy. The harvesting and cutting it down into usable pieces is a real chore. I used just a couple of canes to get a half bottle of pure cane sugar syrup. Probably the first and last time I’ll do that! 😂

Late Season Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes in this climate is still a challenge for me. The best I can do is to grow the tomatoes in the Fall and Winter, and hope I can harvest them before the big freeze comes. Although, last year and this year I built a plastic tent to keep them growing past the first freeze. Seems to work, though I usually harvest them a bit green. Fortunately, tomatoes will continue to ripen when picked green!

Winter in the garden

During the Winter in Zone 9b you can still do a lot. Sorting through your boxes of seeds and planning for next year is always a fun time. This year I planted wheat as a cover crop. I planted it too thick and it doesn’t like the incessant rain we’ve had this spring, but still getting some wheat kernels. We’ll see how that goes. I hope to get enough to make a loaf of bread!

Late Winter is the time to set up the seed trays in the garage to get a jump on Spring. Trying some early spring tomatoes this year. I had a guardian of my seed trays this year. A garden lizard moved in to the garage to escape the few weeks of very cold temps and set up shop eating gnats around my seedlings!

Early Spring

I saw a video on YouTube about how to do a graft to a fruit tree. That looked pretty cool, so I gave it a try. I ordered several species of plum tree to graft on to my existing Santa Rosa Plum. To my total surprise, 5 out of 6 grafted branches took! Wow. Now I have a 3-in-1 plum tree. I think I’ll get plums on the main tree this year, but it might be another year before getting plums on the grafts.

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Onions

I love growing onions. I grew a bunch of onion seedlings from seed under my grow lights, then transplanted them outside. They don’t mind the cold temperatures, so you can put them out early. Hoping for another bumper crop of onions this year.

Other things that grow well with cooler temps include carrots and cabbage, of which I had a lot. Also, Swiss Chard. So much chard. I couldn’t possibly eat it all. I ended up keeping a bunch in plastic bags in the fridge and then not cooking it in time, so it got funky. It was fed back to the garden via my compost pile.

This brings up an important point from prior years, if you have an excess of something either grow less of it, or give it away to friends, neighbors and coworkers. Many folks are excited to get fresh, homegrown produce. You will make friends quickly. 🙂

A Theme for 2026

My garden got a bit unruly last year due to work commitments and other reasons. Weeds were growing thick, out between the bricks, tools were left out in the blazing sun and elements, and there were still tons of old, decaying grow bags full of dirt. So the goal this year is to tidy things up.

I built a plastic storage shed behind some bushes. Got it at the big box store for hundred and something bucks. Used construction glue to reinforce it, and screwed it into the fence to resist hurricane force winds (probably not). Now I have a place to keep my tools from degrading in the sun.

I also used a bunch of left over rocks and pavers from the previous owner of my house, that had been sitting in a pile for no reason. Used them to pave the area behind the bushes near the compost bin and my new shed. Lastly, I used my electric powerwasher to blast the weeds out from between the bricks and stone slabs. Looks much better!

Garden Fails!

It wasn’t all tomatoes and sunshine though. Some garden fails always happen and provide good learning experiences. That’s what’s great about gardening, you will never master it, and there is always something to learn — especially when the climate is changing before your eyes.

I planted a long row of radishes and ended up with a pitiful harvest. I think they were too close to the edge of a raised bed, so didn’t get consistent water. I also need to thin them out more.

Some of my garlic crop was a total fail. The did not bulb out. I think I got crappy cloves, and also the incessant rain late in the Spring didn’t do any favors. I also bought this straw mulch for the third year in a row. Every year it gets more and more loaded with grass seeds. I think the company is having trouble meeting demand so their quality control has gone out the window. It’s HealthiStraw, so if you see that, stay away.

Some other stuff

Thank you for reading. What changes are you noticing in your garden’s weather, bugs, or harvests? Drop a note in the comments—with your location, and one thing that feels different from five years ago—so me and Bertha aren’t the only ones reporting from the field. 😀