GARDENSCAPES
Spring Gardening
Putting the Garden In On Martha's Vineyard
By Amelia Smith
As spring daffodils bloom, vegetable gardeners leave their winter warrens to turn the soil and plant the first seeds of spring. While there’s a tradition of planting peas on St. Patrick’s day, or as soon as the soil can be worked, Island farmers generally start planting later – but how much later varies widely. Spring comes weeks later to the frost bottoms of West Tisbury than it does to Dahlia sprouts protected yards starting indoors down-island, and planting follows suit.
Regardless of the weather, plants need good soil to thrive, and that’s something the Vineyard is not known for. Every serious home gardener I know augments their sandy soil. Nina Gordon gets horse manure from friends and ages it for a year before putting it on her garden along with compost, manure, leaf litter, and wood ash. Terri Mello composts with worms kept in 32-gallon barrels, who digest their way through paper and food scraps year-round. Other gardeners purchase truck-loads of topsoil or manure from local garden centers.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac recommends planting hardy seeds like peas, radishes, and lettuce starting at the very end of March for Hyannis, which has an average last frost of April 27th. That calendar might work well with warm down-Island spots, but up-Island is another matter. Terri has been gardening in one of the Island’s coldest spots since the 1980s. “I’ve had frost as late as June 14th,” she says. Her earliest direct-sown seeds start under plastic tunnels at the April school vacation, around the same time that she plants out the hardy plants she’s started indoors. Nina gardens on a sunny slope in Vineyard Haven, with a bit of shade here and there. She plants peas, kale, and lettuce in the cooler parts of the garden so that they’ll thrive later into the season. She also starts many plants indoors, under lights, and gradually plants them out throughout the spring.
Tomatoes are one of the most popular vegetables to grow at home, and famously sensitive to cold. In the years since she started her Vineyard Haven garden, the time Nina plants the tomatoes outdoors has shifted earlier. She used to plant them out in late May, around the time of her birthday, but now she checks the forecast at the beginning of the month and might plant them out the first or second week of May if the weather looks favorable. Terri starts looking for conditions favorable to tomatoes a full month later, in early June. “They like it hot,” she says. She’ll plant earlier in June if the ground is warm and the forecast calls for cloudy, warm weather. Clear, sunny days in the garden can shift rapidly to cold nights. But the late start doesn’t bother Terri, “They tend to catch up. I may not have the first tomato, but I have a lot of tomatoes.”
Whether just starting out or breaking new ground in the garden, there are a dizzying array of resources to help you along your way, from the expert gardener in your neighborhood to official advisors like the UMass Agricultural Extension. Seeds are available at grocery and hardware stores all over the island, as well as at garden stores. Morning Glory Farm sells a wide variety of seedlings, and if Mother’s Day finds you in Oak Bluffs, stop by the Community Greenhouse of Martha’s Vineyard (formerly known as ComSog) for their annual plant sale. Up-island, farm stands and the West Tisbury Farmer’s Market are great sources of heirloom tomato seedlings.
Each piece of land is unique in its soils, weather, and vegetation, and gardeners bring their own experiences and ambition to the project of putting the garden in. A green thumb is the result of consistent work, observation, and patience, a thriving vegetable garden and its harvest are well w orth the effort.