Fothergilla photo by karen blackerby logan

MAY GARDENING TIPS

May brings warmer sunnier days, cooler nights and springtime rains, the perfect combo to get your newly planted trees, shrubs and perennials established!

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. Learn to make your own compost out of your biodegradable waste and use that to feed your plants. 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.
FERTILIZE: Time to fertilize last years new plantings by top dressing. Sprinkling handfuls of fertilizer around the drip line of the shrubs. Not too close to main stem. The roots grow outward. Organic fertilizers are slower release and contain a lot of secondary and micronutrients. We recommend them! The macronutrients are N,P and K (Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Pottasium) the 3 numbers represented on most fertilizer products. The secondary nutrients are calcium, magnesium and sulfur and there are quite a few micronutrients.
MULCH: Leaf compost is a great island resource to use in your garden beds! This imitates the annual forest leaf fall and provides established plants with all the nutrients they need. Use leaves from your own yard and and/or leaf compost (shredded leaf mulch) that we carry to return local island nutrients to your gardens. We carry shredded leaf compost (island grown) as well as bagged Coast of Main mulches.
ANNUALS: Cool weather annuals now ready to plant. Pansies, violas, alyssum, calendulas, bachelor buttons, argyranthemum daisies, osteospermum and lobelia!
PERENNIALS: It’s time to start planting your perennials!
DIVIDE PERENNIALS: This is a good time to divide summer and fall blooming perennials when they are just emerging.
VEGETABLE GARDENS: Vegetable gardens to be prepped and planted. This is the season to plant cool weather veggies, small fruits and fruit trees. All these are now available at the nursery! Mid to late May we will be bringing our basil and tomatoes out from our production facility to the nursery. But don't push these it's still a little cool at night.
TREES & SHRUBS: Now is a great time to add trees or shrubs to your property. Early May brings sunny day, cool nights and springtime rain which are all great ingredients to get your trees and shrubs established!
PRUNE: Prune any diseased or dead wood on your trees and deciduous shrubs. Prune plants that bloom on new growth.
LAWN CARE: Water your lawns less often and deeper to promote deeper roots. Mow your lawns a little higher and they won't brown out in the heat of summer. May is still a good time to fertilize your lawn if you did not do it in April. It is also a good time to lime, if you didn’t do it in the fall. It takes many months for lime to cause a change in the ph of the soil. Lime now to ensure a healthy fall lawn.

Always think ahead when gardening. Timing is everything!

Viburnum burkwoodii photo by Keith Kurman

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.

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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.