Living in Oklahoma, I have dirt, and very poor dirt at that. We are in the process of building soil for our gardening spots. Heck, last year we put in a 4'x20' wicking bed and it is fabulous, but not near the growing space we need. We have cleared some land, and plan on putting quite a few 25' rows in. We knew we wanted to garden in the area a couple of years ago, and put in about 6 inches of wood mulch. After a year of normal decay, we have allowed our chickens to free range in that area. The top portion is soil now, but it isn't deep and the dirt is just under. We will continue to cultivate our soil so we can have better results. Also, we are wanting to put in a greenhouse this year and are trying to determine the correct location for it after clearing some trees. Actually, the freak ice storm at the end of October cleared a few of the trees for us. LOL The Okra I grew last year (say a dozen plants), I only ate a few pods and saved the rest for seed for this year. Lettuce, Kale, and cabbage I just grew and didn't collect seed. Tomatoes, well... we always seem to have a few that pop up on their own when we toss out the seedy leftovers from when we process them. I do have radish seeds that I collected last year, and currently in ground is a 2nd generation of garlic that I grew. I have some pepper seeds from Kansas City that I collected, so will plant some of those this year. I plan on growing a LOT of new varieties this year, and plan to collect as many seeds as possible if I can keep the chickens away. They have really gotten use to free ranging, and I'm not sure that they will be happy with the 1/4 acre we are about to confine them to. We have contemplated letting them free range for like an hour before they will put themselves up for the evening, and that would be for bug control. Last year, they free ranged and well ate most of the harvest before we could. We will not make that mistake again. LOL.