I got a new wide-angle lens for my camera this week.

Let’s take a look at the gardens.

Here is our new yam bed with trellises installed:

Those are the “trellis to make you jealous” trellises we started using last year after seeing Josh Sattin’s video.

They should work great for yams. Last year’s yam trellises were made from rebar and poly twine and weren’t strong enough.

Three beds of yams should also give us plenty of calories.

Beside the yams is the mixed-up garden:

I let the goats eat some of it as their pasture has been limited during the cold months. The frost took down some of our peas, so I figured “why not” and let the goats have a couple of days tied up in that mess.

Today they’re tied up by the muscadine vines.

We need to get a buck to breed these girls. It’s at the top of the list right now. These goats need to pay for their keep, and that isn’t happening until we can start milking them.

Here’s a shot of the Grocery Row Gardens:

I’m experimenting with adding grass and clover to the pathways on three of the rows.

It’s quite pretty and stops the erosion of nutrients but I don’t know how it will work out long-term. It’s quite easy to wheel hoe bare paths, though it’s nicer to walk on these green ones.

Things look thin now compared to last year, but as the weather warms we’ll see a huge explosion of growth.

This is a shot of the same area from last year:

Winter knocks things back but not for long. Right now we’re watching to see what returns and what doesn’t, as there are a lot of tropical crops mixed into these beds which we hope will regrow from the ground instead of simply dying after a single season.

Farther out at the edge of the gardens, the potatoes are slowly emerging.

This is a weird spring. Warm, then super cold, and now warm again. Potatoes don’t like that, but I am hoping it won’t get hot too quickly. If the weather stays cool to warm, but not hot, we may still get some good potatoes.

In the Grocery Row Gardens I am pleased to see that our strawberries sailed through the heat of summer in 2021 and through the cold of winter, and now look happy:

They make a nice ground cover beneath fruit trees.

That’s all for today – I’m headed off to look at the neighbor’s field where we’re planting watermelons this spring. Everything needs to get done fast – spring is here!

You can learn how to start Grocery Row Gardening in my little book on the topic – it’s now only $9.99.