The MV Community Seed Library Group hosts another seed swap and giveaway on the West Tisbury Library porch, weather permitting.
Gardening
March 28, 2021
Home gardeners can learn regenerative growing practices at one of three upcoming workshops sponsored by Island Grown.
2012
October 4, 2012
In May, Richard (RJ) Cage and his two sons built a handicap accessible vegetable garden at the Farm Institute. They used old barn wood to create the raised bed, making sure it was tall enough for wheelchair users to be able to lean over and pick crops easily. Over the summer more than 10 participants from the Seven Hills Foundation, a year-round day program for adults with developmental disabilities, worked in the garden two to three times a week.
July 30, 2012
Tomatoes and melons are on the way, cucumbers are having a banner year and demand is up for Island-grown produce, especially kale and chard. The biggest problem? Vineyard farmers can sum it up at the mid-summer mark in a single word.
“Dry,” said Bob Daniels of Old Town Gardens at the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market on Saturday. “I have irrigation, but it’s not like rain.”
July 23, 2012
Big, blue snowballs of hydrangeas backed by a white picket fence are a summer staple on the Vineyard. While the mophead flowers of bigleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) are the most popular with tourists, there is a whole world of hydrangeas for gardeners to explore. On a seed-collecting expedition to Japan in 2005, I encountered three other hydrangea species that are valuable ornamentals: the panicle hydrangea, (Hydrangea paniculata), the mountain hydrangea (Hydrangea serrata), and involucre hydrangea (Hydrangea involucrata).
June 14, 2012
I live with my 97-year-old grandmother Rena in the farmhouse she bought with my grandfather in 1963, as a place for them to retire.
April 12, 2012
My perennial beds are in serious disrepair. I did manage to get them cut back of last season’s debris. However they haven’t seen a cultivator or any fertilizer in a few years, forget about any weeding taking place. The mugwort has run rampant. For those of you unfamiliar with this weedy artemisia, it is in one form the herb moxa used in acupuncture. It has healing properties when burned on a patient. I had it work one time when the practitioner burned a cyst from the top of my hand. It was quite remarkable, actually.
2011
June 20, 2011
Snap, shell, snow: June means pea season on the Vineyard.
It’s a rite of summer, seeing the “We Have Our Peas” sign placed for the first time in front of the Bayes Norton Farm stand on Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road. (The Vineyarder who originally painted the sign wrote “Pease,” thinking it was spelled the same as the old Island family.)
Their peas are so sweet it’s as though owners Jamie and Dianne Norton added sugar to the soil.
