APRIL GARDENING TIPS

March 28, 2024 Karen Logan

Dogwood illustration by karen blackerby logan

APRIL GARDENING TIPS

April is the start of the gardening season. Here are some tips to get your yard ready for summer!

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GARDEN CLEAN UP: Clean up the fall and winter debris of dead leaves and branches in and around your gardens and yard. We have lots of gardening tools at the nursery to help with clean up.
SOIL CARE: Nourish your soil! Applying nutrients to the soil nourishes it, making it richer with the minerals and essential elements your plants need to grow. We have Coast of Maine compost and manure, as well as Fafard products. You can also take this time to test your soil with a soil testing kit to see what your soil needs. We have those in stock as well.
SPRING ANNUALS: Plant spring annuals in your container gardens or fill in between perennials in your garden beds. Pansies are now available and Sweet Alyssum will be ready soon! This spring we have a new offering, a selection of Hardy Annuals that Andrew Wiley started from seed last fall. We have an amazing crop of poppy’s, bachelor buttons(centaurea cyanus), Queen Anne’s Lace(Ammi majus Select White) and more! To learn more about Hardy Annuals check out our post about Succession Planting.
EDIBLES: This is the season to plant cool weather veggies, small fruits and fruit trees. All these are now available at the nursery!
TREES & SHRUBS: Now is a great time to add trees or shrubs to your property.
PRUNE: Prune any diseased or dead wood on your trees and deciduous shrubs.
LAWN EDGING: Lawn edging helps to clearly divide the flower beds from the lawn. Beyond aesthetics, edging also separates the soil, mulch, and rocks. We have ten foot pieces of heavy duty black plastic edging available at the Nursery.

Viburnum burkwoodii photo by keith kurman

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CLEANING AND SHARPENING YOUR TOOLS

It’s that time of year when we are all itching to get out into our yard and start planting or pruning. Before you jump into your projects, give yourself a minute to tune up your tools. “A good cleaning, oiling, and sharpening now will pay dividends and make your job much easier. Make sure you have a good pair of gloves, a tarp, a bypass pruner, a lopper, disinfectant spray, and/or anti-bacterial wipes at the ready. I have also found a reciprocating saw comes in handy for those thick, sturdy stems.”(Lorraine Ballato) If you don’t have the equipment to sharpen your pruners, loppers, hedge shears and pruning saw’s you can drop them off at the Vineyard Gardens and Jeremiah Brown will sharpen them for you for a fee.

You should also clean and sharpen your spades and shovels, it will make your garden tasks so much easier and safer. Its good practice to keep a 5gal. bucket with sand mixed with old, used motor oil in it around to clean your tools after using them. This is also a good time to oil the wood stocks of any tools with wooden handles, it will give it a chance to soak in and renew the grain making them stronger and last longer.

Winter and early spring are great times to clean and sharpen tools.

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LAWN CARE

April is the best month to care for your lawn and fertilize. We have a wide array of Jonathan Green lawn care products available from fertilizers to weed control to grass seed!

April is the best month to fertilize and reseed your lawn. Grass is a cool weather lover and will grow a lot in the cool spring. Fertilizer should be applied when plants want to grow.
Grass, like all plants need macronutrients and micronutrients. Our organic fertilizers release nutrients more slowly and are loaded with micronutrients. The inorganic fertilizers have higher doses of the macronutrients which are N-P-K or Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. Thus the 3 numbers found on the fertilizer bag. For example 5-10-5. Each number represents each nutrient.
Inorganic lawn fertilizers are very high in Nitrogen.
If you did not lime your lawn in the fall, April is a good time to lime it. The lime takes months to cause the lowering of the acidity. It is a chemical process. We recommend liming in the fall so that the pH adjustment has happened by the time the grass starts growing in spring.
Apply lawn care pre emergent before Forsythia bloom. There is always an organic option. Corn Gluten is an organic weed seed preventer and adds nutrients to your lawn.
Success with seeding any lawn, including small patches, is to put down some rich soil under the seed. Then it is important to keep the seed moist.

***IMPORTANT FERTILIZATION LAW ON MARTHA’S VINEYARD!!

Fertilizer can not be applied until April 15. This law was passed to protect our bodies of water. The reason for that time frame is by then the lawns are actively growing and will use the nutrients instead of those nutrients leaching into the ground water.

Vineyard Gardens Landscaping is available to help with all your gardening needs!

perennial plant of the year

*Phlox paniculata* 'Jeana'

GREENS & COOL WEATHER CROPS

March 31, 2023 Karen Logan

St. Patrick's Day is traditionally when you plant your peas out in the garden. If you missed it we've got you covered. Peas like to do most of their growth in cool temperatures

GREENS & COOL WEATHER CROPS

“It's nearly springtime when a person’s thoughts should hopefully turn to ....... vegetables! That's right it's time to start our vegetable gardens. Even though our frost free date is technically May 1st, this is a great time of year to start our cool loving vegetables. There are many vegetables that can handle the light frosts we get this time of year. If a colder night were to be predicted, in the high 20s, you can cover your freshly planted vegetables with Reemay, plastic or an old sheet to protect them from the frost. At this point, most greens can be planted and some, like spinach, do much better in cooler weather than in the summer. Broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage are known as cole crops, which sounds like cold crops, all do very well planted at this time a year too. While kids don't always like the spicy taste of radishes, they are a great vegetable for them to plant as they come up in a matter of days and are ready to pick in a few short weeks. “ - Chuck Wiley , owner & founder of Vineyard Gardens Landscaping

We always start a bountiful selection of leafy salad greens

Leafy greens like cooler temperatures to produce quick, tender leaves for your salads and cooking. the earlier you get them in the ground the better!

COMING SOON!

VEGGIE SIX PACKS ARE GROWING IN OUR GREENHOUSES NOW!

Our spring supply of vegetables in packs will be ready soon!

PEAS: Don’t forget to plant your peas. Soak before seeding, it speeds up germination. They imbibe and more easily split the seed coat so the radicle can anchor itself down to become the root system. The two cotyledons then emerge, sometimes the seed coat stays attached to one of the cotyledons. It’s so beautiful watching the birth of a plant. We have hundreds of plants being born every day at Vineyard Gardens.

BROCCOLIS: We will have a variety of broccolis in packs, such as Calabrese, Romanesco, Waltham and Cauliflower Snowball.

WE WILL HAVE A WONDERFUL SELECTION OF IN-HOUSE GREENS!

Lettuces, Kales, Mustards, Collards and Asian vegetables like Pac Choi and Tatsoi can go in the soil very soon!

do this before

planting out your beans & peas!

SPRING AT VINEYARD GARDENS

April 18, 2022 Karen Logan

Spring is a very busy and productive time at Vineyard Gardens. Our landscape division crews are already out doing spring clean ups. Our in-house production is busy planting bulbs, liners, bare root perennials, roses, trees and shrubs. The nursery is in full swing unloading truck full of plants from New Jersey, Virginia and Oregon. And the early spring flowers, like pansies and pieris japonica, are in their full bloom glory.

We also just put the poppy’s and primulas outside to harden off and we have our usual beautiful crop of 5” perennials. It is an exciting time of year!

We recycle. sterilizing plastic growing containers and trays

Labeling is critical from day one! As plants are potted up, each one has to be accurately labeled.

Getting strawberries started early is important for this season's production. We give them a jump start but you should be planting them out as soon as we're 'frost-free'.

In the Fall, any bulbs left unsold get potted up and forced for Spring color.

We have become well known for our well grown Delphiniums. Here they are early in the season

Growing on 4in perennials, its economical to buy your perennials early in smaller sizes. better for the plants too!

Our Landscape Division are already out there doing Spring Cleanups, if you haven't set yours up yet, call the office today!

Pansies are in full color at the nursery!

VINEYARD GARDEN'S SEED PROJECT

March 10, 2022 Karen Logan

Believe it or not spring is on its way! It’s such an exciting time at our in-house facility, seedlings starting to emerge and a new season taking shape. We decided to re-post this from last year to remind all our friends and family what Vineyard Gardens does during this time of year.

Vineyard Gardens Nursery, located in West Tisbury, is a botanical paradise situated on five acres of land with ten greenhouses. Established over thirty years ago with one greenhouse, it has developed into an island staple and agricultural enclave. Rooted in horticulture and plant science degrees, Chris and Chuck Wiley have developed their one time modest landscaping company into a full on plant production center, nursery and landscaping company.

The Wiley’s are passionate about providing their customers with the healthiest and hardiest plants and have found many benefits in nurturing them into this world from seed. To enable this in-house production they have, over the years, built a separate five acre growing site named VG2. The facility has both indoor and outdoor growing spaces including four 100ft greenhouses, one of which is purpose built for “germinating” seeds into seedlings. It’s within this carefully temperature and humidity controlled greenhouse complete with automated mist-watering and heated benches that life begins for the bulk of their veggies, herbs, annuals, and perennials.

The range of plants that Vineyard Gardens germinate at VG2 is extensive. Chris explains, “We start a few hundred varieties of mostly annuals but always seed a dozen or more perennials, trees and shrubs as well. Once the plants are ready for sale we truck them to Vineyard Gardens Nursery. The most challenging part is having the crops ready on time and in sufficient numbers. Sometimes we grow too much but more often we sell out of many of our annual crops including Proven Winners® .”

Chris exudes excitement about her production like they are her children. She could discuss the plethora of produce and flora she grows in English, Latin and Spanish with an excitement that makes you want to experiment with it yourself. With a twinkle in her eye she exclaims, “But our proudest moment is in spring, seeing our amazing display of vegetable packs, which we seed ourselves. Our customers are getting more and more into the edibles and herbs. We germinate many varieties of greens. We now also grow Asian greens including Chinese cabbage, Bok Choy and Tatsoi. And we seed a Brazilian vegetable called Jilot and we sell over 500 of them. And currently the cool weather crops are growing beautifully in the green houses.” Chris finishes it off with, “We love our edible crops!”

The Wiley’s have a keen desire to keep Vineyard Gardens’ plant selection fresh and intriguing year after year. They have developed a symbiotic relationship between their love of plants and love for travel. These horticultural explorations have inspired them to collect seeds on their journey’s and germinate them at VG2. “Last year we found the seed Tweedia Caerulea, Blue Butterfly Weed, for sale and bought it from Geo seed catalog. We will have it again this year hopefully in good numbers. We will have the Nolana Bluebird this year which is a great plant. And back by popular demand we will have white lace, Orlaya grandiflora.” Chris explains.

This second location, based solely on production, has made it possible to keep Vineyard Gardens retail location stocked so efficiently. Between their expertise and ambition to cultivate, Vineyard Gardens is ready to help you along on your gardening journey. If you want to learn first hand from these experts, join them Saturday mornings at 11am for a wonderful and insightful Garden Talk and workshop. Check out their website www.vineyardgardens.net to see the full listing of events

SPRINGTIME AT THE NURSERY

April 15, 2020 Karen Logan

Our plants are growing beautifully! Greenhouse 4 is full at both locations. We are now working on filling Greenhouse 3. Geraniums were potted in House 3 along with the New Guinea impatiens. Debbie has been seeding in Greenhouse 1 at our Vineyard Gardens 2 location. She is done with the first run of cool weather lovers and just started 15 plus different varieties of tomatoes from seed. Come by and ask about the Heirloom varieties we are growing.

Our hard working team has been potting millions of bells, lobelia and passiflora baskets. We have forced bulbs in pots ready for sale, like tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. Check out this virtual tour of Keukenhof, the Netherlands national flower bulb park for inspiration.

We are also potting some more bare root plants that came in from Walters Gardens in Michigan. We decided to put them right outside and cover them with a double layer of Reemay. That way they develop nicely at the cooler temperature.

COOL WEATHER CROPS

Come check out our spring supply of vegetables in packs. Some of the lettuces, kales and mustards are ready. We also have collards and Asian vegetables like Pac Choi and Tatsoi. These cool weather lovers can go in the soil very soon.

Don’t forget to plant your peas. Soak before seeding, it speeds up germination. They imbibe and more easily split the seed coat so the radicle can anchor itself down to become the root system. The two cotyledons then emerge, sometimes the seed coat stays attached to one of the cotyledons. It’s so beautiful watching the birth of a plant. We have hundreds of plants being born every day at Vineyard Gardens.

VEGGIE SIX PACKS HAVE BEEN HARDENED OFF AND READY TO PLANT

tat soi (miniature Chinese cabbage-like).jpeg

IN THE TIME OF ISOLATION

April 2, 2020 Karen Logan

Written by Keith Kurman

We will still be taking care of our gardens, getting ready for the growing season, a great thing to be doing while 'staying home'. "We must all cultivate our gardens." Photo credit: Keith Kurman

Welcome to shut-down

This COVID-19 quarantine is such a strange phenomenon, something I never really thought would happen in our lifetimes. It all seemed to happen so quickly, though it’s been rolling out over several months, kinda like a car crash, seemingly unfolding slowly, methodically and as if predetermined however over in a matter of seconds. Then there is the aftermath that IS long and arduous, where everything you hadn’t considered has to be dealt with systematically, periodically interrupted by flashbacks and questions as to how we got here and those things that will never be the same.

What do we do now? Here at Vineyard Gardens we are trying to stay calm and carry on.

Over in Landscape Division, just now in our busiest time of the year, we are forced to shut-down, pulling our trucks off jobs sites and laying off newly hired workers. This will be going on at this point for an undermined period of time. Going forward, all our landscape clients will need to understand that schedules are interrupted and when we are able to be back on the roads we will be scrambling to catch up. Please be patient.

At the Nursery/Garden Center we’re a bit “tail over tea kettle” because in nursery growing production “time waits for no one!” There is a very narrow window of time in which plants need to be ready to plant out. One thing we pride ourselves on is Island-Grown! We start most of our dazzling array of plants from seeds, plugs and divisions, to do so planning and timing are everything. Despite this unforeseen ‘cease and desist’ order ALL of our 15 greenhouses are FULL of young plants itching to get in the ground! We’ve had to quickly adapt to the new time frames and modified demand. We will be working to be sure that when the lock-down is over we will have plants ready to go for all your gardening needs.

At home, Nasturtiums are an easy plant to grow from seed and it's delicious and nutritious! Photo credit: Keith Kurman

You won't be seeing this familiar sight around for a while. Photo credit: Keith Kurman

Don't these look delicious! Mustard Greens, Tat-Soi, Red and Leafy Green Lettuces and Frisée we'll be making lots of these this year, ready to go salad garden. Photo credit: Keith Kurman — Don't these look delicious! Mustard Greens, Tat-Soi, Red and Leafy Green Lettuces and **Frisée** we'll be making lots of these this year, ready to go salad garden. Photo credit: Keith Kurman

Luckily sound minds have prevailed and the Garden Center has set-up an on-line ordering and pick-up system that allows customers to place orders for materials and swing by to pick them up. You can find the order form here.

One amazing thing that may come of this is that government officials will come to realize that local nurseries must be classed as “essential services”! Yes,under the circumstances, with this shut down, which may continue for some time, our food delivery chain may be interrupted. We may be forced to “grow our own” where heretofore this was a quaint aphorism now becomes a question of necessity. To do that home farmers will need supplies and materials that can only be gotten at your local nursery. This would include in many cases, compost, tools, fertilizers, pest controls and not in the least, plants and seeds!

We will be following up with posts addressing the questions we will be needing to address as we are forced to shift our priorities and adopt new approaches to thinking and our way of life.

One thing is made clear, gardening may be essential to meeting our survival needs but it is also a living metaphor for our essential natures and our connection to our fragile and generous home, Earth. Gardening is one of the things we can do that completes us and infects no one.