VERMILLION COUNTY —
Becky Nelson of Nelson Nursery and Greenhouses in Vermillion County has been growing bedding plants and vegetables from seed preparing for Wabash Valley customers itching to garden this spring.
“We’ll have a lot of people in this time of year because they’re getting antsy. They want to see something growing,” Nelson said. She expects an influx of customers between April 15 and May 15.
“We’re starting to chill our peppers,” Nelson said. They put them in an unheated greenhouse to begin “hardening” them. “It’s a great way to save the homeowner or home grower a step. We also have cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli … they’ve been hardened off.”
With the economy being the way it is, Nelson wants growers to be careful about placing plants outside too soon. “We try to tell [customers] when they can and cannot plant things.”
For those antsy gardeners, cold-crop veggies could have been planted as early as March 15. Otherwise, staples of the summer vegetable garden will have to wait a little longer. The most popular plants the nursery sells are tomatoes and peppers, Nelson said.
“Tomatoes have to have a nighttime temperature of 50 degrees or higher to continue to grow. If you put it out April 1 and we have 20 days below 50, then you’ve turned that into a 70-day [producing] tomato instead of a 90-day tomato. They are tropical plants,” Nelson said.
“Tomatoes and peppers, things like sweet potatoes, shouldn’t even be put out until the first week in May. You’re not gaining anything by putting them out early,” she said. You can even put out a garden as late as July 1, she said.
Flowers shouldn’t be outside until May 10 — the frost date, Nelson said. “Hot-loving flowers shouldn’t be in the ground until the first week in May.”
“We grow probably three quarters of a million bedding plants … and it’s grown here. It’s grown locally; it’s acclimated to this area,” she said. “The staples are still marigolds, begonias” and impatiens.
The nursery also tries to help gardeners with the technicals of growing. “People have a tendency to overplant,” Nelson said. “Tell us how much room you’ve got and we’ll show you how to plant it. That’s our forte. We try and help people, try and educate people. People will say, ‘I have this and the deer ate it.’ We just use our resource books,” Nelson said.
Attending to the produce at the end of the season is also important, Nelson said. “People better learn to can, and they better learn to freeze,” because it saves money. “We’re actually going to try to do some canning classes this summer. There’s nothing better than fresh.”
Nelson Nursery and Greenhouses is off Indiana 163. For more information, call (765) 832-7989.
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Related Photos
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Seed time: Kenny Nelson uses his "$300 cookie sheet" to start bedding plants. The tray is hooked up to a vacuum hose. Each tiny seed gets stuck on a tiny hole by suction. He inverts the tray over an exactly sized, prepared tray of potting soil. The vacuum is cut, dropping some 228 seeds precisely into the soil. Jim Avelis
Discussion
Vermillion County nursery preparing for busy season
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