This is when the Grocery Row Gardens really protrude looking great .
The trees and shrubs have filled in , the ground back are running , little vegetables are popped into the gaps , the flowers are blooming and various vine are covering their trellises .
‘ The vines in the photo above areDioscorea pentaphylla(trellis on the left , curling into the air ) .
We were n’t sure how they would do here , but we got some fromDerek Clawson’snursery last twelvemonth and plant them . I could n’t find where they were by the remnant of fall when we were cleaning up and harvesting , but they break from the ground with unbelievable vigor in the outflow .
Last year they were overrun byD. alata , so this year they got their own trellis . Perhaps they ’ll give us some bulbils this class . I ’m queer to see how their roots work as a survival crop . They have survived a 17 - stage dark in the ground and come back stiff , so it seems they are better adapted here than the name yam ( D. rotundifolia)we have planted multiple times here . Those consistently moulder in the ground over winter and conk out to return in spring .
Here ’s a dig from the unexpended edge of the Grocery Row Garden , looking across the first course .
That ’s aMusa basjoocold - dauntless banana in the center , flank by mulberry tree , Canna musifoliaand taro . Musa basjoodoesn’t make edible banana , but we are test it as a biomass crop for compost and feeding to stock .
Speaking of livestock …
We have tramp duck . They are pest when you are are essay to grow small vegetables , but they are n’t much worry in the Grocery Row Gardens since we have more perennial and less delicate clobber that they can jaw up or trample . It ’s fun to keep an eye on them wander around .
We ’ve been surprise by how predatory animal - savvy our minor troop of ducks has been . We ’ve fall behind a twosome of them ( one to a snapping turtle that destroyed her ramification ) , but the remain one are doing well . We even had a buff duck’s egg hatch out five ducklings a few days ago , and a distaff mallard is sitting on a next beside the theatre trying to incubate her own grip .
We do n’t even bung our ducks – they just wander the yard and fertilise themselves .
I ’ve said in the past that you could in all likelihood expand the nerve tract in a Grocery Row Garden to a full four foot and it would n’t be too much space . The density really gets acute during the raise season .
We ’re already pushing our room through branches and vine and banana tree and taro leaf to get through , as we carefully step over sweet potato , cucumber and watermelon vine vines .
It ’s truly a beautiful system . I much prefer the hobo camp growth of a Grocery Row Garden to boxed - in raised beds , containers , square foot gardens or stock row gardens .
Compare this :
To this :
That was how we grew garden , long ago .
There is a wild beauty to a Grocery Row Garden which prompt me more of Eden and less of horrible modernity .
I wrotethe petty book on how to make this systema duet of age ago , and the method acting has not let us down . It just gets more and more beautiful .
