Michelle save :
David , your comment about strawberries as footing cover made me wonder about this as a strategy in the food market rows . What mix of annual vs perennials might be most good ? Are there benefits and drawbacks to one or the other ?
Everything depend on your mood and what you want from your Grocery Row Garden .
Mixing up Species in a Grocery Row Garden
I do n’t like to extensively plan my garden or prescribe accurate mixes of species . We plant strawberries last year to see how they would do here in Alabama . They ’re disseminate out underneath a few trees in the Grocery Row Gardens and are doing well . fresh murphy also did very well . I have heap in another bed that has comprehend the ground , and in a component part of last year ’s GRG gardens we had a long stretch of straggle Everglades tomato plants act as a land cover . I ’ve also grown clover , turnips , mustard greens , black - eyed peas , gingers and even a pumpkin vine in the ground cover layer .
If there ’s a low - rise flora you like , give it a endeavor . My favorite scheme is to just plant a bunch of different things together , or so sorting them out by growth habit and where they tally in the erect layer ( myopic ? tall ? vining ? creeping ? ) and put up a yield . If anything runs over something else too much it gets chopped back .
If you are in a tropical climate , you will have different metal money and commixture than in a temperate climate .
Down in Grenada , our top level was mostly bananas and plantains and papaya , with a middle layer of cassava and comestible hibiscus and amaranth , with leaf vegetables and beans and taro and sweet potatoes for the background natural covering stratum .
Here in a more temperate mood , we have pear and apples and endocarp fruit for the top level , with blueberries , raspberry , blackberries and other crops for the middle stratum , with white potatoes , brassicas and sweet potatoes for the ground cover . And strawberries !
As for the benefits or drawbacks of yearly and perennial , this video may be useful :
Kelli writes :
What about take the air - on - me thyme or other tough ground covering that ’s useful or else of grass ?
This is regarding the pathways which I set with rye grass and trefoil .
Sure , why not ? I just had a nice cover mix and was thinking of something I could graze chickens on later on ; though I never puzzle around to making a little chicken tractor to run down the row . My friend Elizabeth institute the row between her bottom with sweet murphy and they did unusually well .
Watering Fruit Trees
Ed writes :
How much body of water the small new Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and great Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree should get per sidereal day ? And is it bad when e.g. I put too much water supply every day ?
Yes , too much water will rot a tree ’s roots , specially in heavy clay soils . If you have a drip running at one turning point of a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree ’s ascendant zone , it will gayly get all the water it needs from that region . In most soils if you rain cats and dogs a five - gallon bucket of water supply at the radix of a newly plant tree every day or two for the first few weeks , it ought to do well . Or melt down your hosepipe on a drip through the Clarence Day .
The important thing to make fruit trees grow fast is to make certain they are n’t thirst for water . That ’s more common than having them get too much water .
Today I ’m headed out to the watermelon orbit to bring down the grass and get quick to till . We attend it over yesterday and it needs a mowing .
It ’s a gracious , heavy area and we need to get started . This is where we ’ll plant watermelons mainly , and probably some pumpkins and maize .
Everything happens at once in spring – got ta get rolling !
you may learn how to commence Grocery Row Gardening inmy picayune Koran on the topic – it ’s now only $ 9.99 .
