Garden Mastery Tips
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November/December 2001 |
Web Site Recommendations
Winter is approaching – nature's forced ending of another gardening season. Winter creates mixed emotions for most gardeners, who mourn the loss of time spent outdoors, yet celebrate the addition of unfettered time. Time to reflect on last season and plan for next spring. Time to read and dream…
How do you spend these extra winter hours? Many gardeners spend this time improving their gardening knowledge: reading books, browsing plant catalogues, and searching through piles of seed catalogues. Time well spent, but let's not forget our newest source of gardening information – the World Wide Web. As authors of web site gardening articles, we recommend spending some of your free time searching (and finding) gardening information on the Internet. Unfortunately, there are so many garden-related web sites that a gardener could get eyestrain, or worse, carpal tunnel syndrome, from endless searching. So as a gift to our readers – to reduce the amount of time spent browsing to find good web sites – we've listed our favorite Internet sites. Those places we personally go to time and time again for information, entertainment, and just to catch up on what's new in the gardening world. We hope you enjoy these sites as much as we do. And remember – you've earned this free time … so enjoy!
Hortsense from Washington State University: pep.wsu.edu/hortsense Plant problems? This is the place to go for answers! Presented by WSU's Cooperative Extension Service, this site contains easy-to-find information to help home gardeners manage plant problems using IPM (Integrated Pest Management). Definitely at the top of our list!
Gardening in Western Washington: gardening.wsu.edu Another great WSU Cooperative Extension web site. Contains a wider variety of information than the Hortsense site; including lists of local specialty nurseries, NW native plants, and web links.
Search Engine – WSU College of Agriculture & Home Economics: cru.cahe.wsu.edu This site allows you to search WSU Cooperative Extension's vast on-line information quickly and easily. Just type in your question and go!
Agricultural Search Engine: web-agri.com This agricultural search engine contains over 667,000 web pages!
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer NW Gardens: seattlep-i.nwsource.com/nwgardens Wonderful weekly articles from well-known Pacific Northwest garden writers Marty Wingate, Ann Lovejoy, Marianne Binetti, and others. Visit this site weekly!
Two Rainy Side Gardeners: rainyside.com Focus is on gardening in the maritime climates of the Pacific Northwest. An excellent resource of gardening articles, plant lists, and links to other quality web sites. Well worth visiting time and time again.
The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon: hardyplantsociety.org This site contains a terrific list of web site links, including many local business web sites (Portland Metro area).
GardenGate Magazine: gardengatemagazine.com A great gardening magazine, and a great web site! Includes sections on gardening basics, garden designs, "how to" projects, and in-depth plant information from past magazine articles. Another site to visit regularly.
Botanique – Portal to Gardens, Arboreta, and Nature Sites: botanique.com Looking for a list of public gardens in another city or state? You'll find that here. So before you take your next trip, visit here first!
Garden Pages: gardenpages.com Contains seasonal gardening articles including caring for roses, deer-proof gardening, and butterfly gardens. An emphasis on organic practices, with links to other web sites.
Northwest Berry & Grape Information Network: orst.edu/dept/infonet This site contains great information for Northwest berry and grape growers. While geared toward commercial growers, home gardeners are sure find valuable information as well.
Directions for Pesticides, Fungicides, and Herbicides: greenbook.net/freesearchcpr.asp Lost your directions for Basicop, but still need to use it? This site contains label directions, MSDS's, and supplemental labels for most garden chemicals.
"Talking Plants" with Ketzel Levine: talkingplants.com Portland's own Ketzel Levine – National Public Radio's "Doyenne of Dirt", and author of Plant This – answers your gardening questions on-line, offers plant profiles, and much more.
The Oregonian Newspaper's Weekly Garden Articles: oregonlive.com/gardencenter Weekly articles from feature writers Dulcy Mahar, Bill Monroe, Vern Nelson and more. Great place to find out about garden happenings in the Portland Metro area!
Horticulture Magazine on-line: hortmag.com Much of the current issue is available on-line, as well as other information not found in the magazine.
Sunset Magazine on-line: sunset.com Another great magazine with lots of information on-line!
On-line Seed Catalogues: webdesk.com/seed/catalogs A terrific list of seed company web sites. Looking for a particular variety of seed? This is the place to start your search.