Our Bok Choy Seedlings
Here are my top 10 go-to websites that I visit when I need gardening tips. If you want to start a garden, or if you’re an experienced gardener looking to improve your skills, take a couple minutes to check out these sites. And before I lose any of you who live in apartments and think you can’t garden, I’ll point out that my list includes tips on unconventional gardening- from container gardening to window gardening (yes, rigging up a vertical garden in your window- you’ve got to see it to believe it). Here are the best gardening websites I’ve found:
- Sunset.com- Basically an encyclopedia of gardening. Check out their plant finder, where you can find the most ideal plants for your area. I also love their garden design ideas, and they’ve got a whole archive of articles on small-space container gardening.
- Weather.com- They’ve got an entire section devoted to garden-related forecasting, including an absolutely essential tool- a gardener’s forecast customized to your particular location. Want to know whether you need to cover your plants tonight to protect from frost? Want to know the watering needs of your plants over the next few days? This website will answer those questions with a clear layout showing all of the variables that might affect your plants (rain, wind, temperature, light intensity) in the upcoming week.
- Like Sunset.com, Urban Sustainable Living.com has amassed a treasure trove of useful articles on gardening, but it’s focus is entirely on small space gardening (which frankly applies to suburbs just as well as cities- most people don’t want to tear up their lawn to install a garden when they could create a container garden on the patio instead).
- Renee’s Garden Seeds offers organic and non-GMO seeds, but I like this website best for it’s excellent archive of unintimidating gardening how-to articles- including Gardening with Children, Growing Your Container Kitchen Garden, and What to Plant in the Shade.
- Love Apple Farm is a nationally renowned small farm that elevates tomato growing to an art form- so if you want to take your tomato growing to the next level, check out their Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Growing Tomatoes and Growing Tomatoes in Containers.
- Speaking of tomatoes, did you know that planting tomatoes next to carrots will stunt the growth of the carrots? Or that planting chamomile next to onions improves the flavor of the onions? Golden Harvest Organics has compiled a comprehensive list of all of these companion planting tips here. Don’t be put off by the 1990′s formatting of the website- the tips are tried and true (and make sure to scroll down on the page if you don’t see them).
- Looking for some city gardening inspiration? Try Urban Homestead- the website of a family in Pasadena, California that figured out how to grow 6000 pounds of produce a year on 1/10th of an acre.
- So, how about that window farming? Windowfarms.com explains the concept with beautiful pictures and informative videos. Best of all, they provide detailed instructions for how to build your own window farm (or if you’re not feeling very handy with the tools, you can buy them pre-made).
- Just for fun, check out this garden pool. They’ve got lots of photos and videos showing how they transformed a backyard pool into a micro farm complete with vegetables, fish and chickens.
- Ok, back to more conventional gardening- if you like how-to tips but would rather watch them in video format, check out Garden Girl from HGTV. Her website has lots of videos covering all the basics of gardening.
What’s your go-to gardening website?
Thanks for reading! I love comments, so let me know if these websites did (or didn’t) work for you.
