The Vine: April 18, 2008
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on April 18, 2008 – 10:52 AM23 Comments
Hi Sars,
Seeing as your readers have such great taste in blogs, I’m wondering if anyone has any blogs to recommend on the subject of gardening, particularly vegetable gardening — the more specific to the climate of the Northeast US, the better. I’m looking to read the musings of those who are as fired up about turning earth and rotating crops as you are about spring training and punctuation.
You’ll always be first in the daily rotation!
Dear Ro,
Aw, thanks. To repay the compliment, I promise to get off my duff and go to Lowe’s to buy some gerania.
I don’t read any gardening blogs, but I’m sure my readers do. Readers? Hit it — and please TinyURL those links, or otherwise break them up for formatting reasons. Thanks!
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Tags: Ask The Readers sites
Friends of mine have a blog about the gardening they do in the north part of the Netherlands http://tinyurl.com/6glbdt. I can’t really say if this is close to the climate of the NE, but I doubt it’s far off. The guy’s speciality is heirloom gardening, but I’m sure there’s something of interest there for you, as well as a tons of links on the right side of the page.
Oooo, I will look forward to the responses to this one!
Personally I enjoy the gardening blog of the Empress of Dirt ( http://www.empressofdirt.blogspot.com ). I don’t know how much vegetable gardening she does, but she has a lovely suburban flower garden and posts lots of pictures.
One of my favorites is yougrowgirl.com. The author, Gayla Trail, lives in Toronto, and a lot of what she writes is related to gardening in urban or otherwise limited spaces, but I’ve found her advice to be applicable to my backyard garden in Tidewater Virginia, too.
I don’t garden but I did see in the Times yesterday (article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/ garden/17garden.html?scp=1 &sq=vegetable+garden&st=nyt)
this article about people who garden their own veggies. The guy cited grows all of his family’s vegetables in Maine- take it from me, if he can do it here, it can be done anywhere in the Northeast. He’s got a gardening site that looks like a huge repository of information for kitchen gardeners: http://www.kitchengardeners.org/.
I can’t believe I forgot Gayla, who I’ve met in real life. Sorry, Gayla!
Garden Rant ( http://www.gardenrant.com ). It’s a group blog with contributors from several areas of the U.S., and it covers all sorts of topics, not just vegetables, but clicking the “Eat This” tag will pull up lots of articles. Elizabeth Licata gardens in Buffalo, and another contributor, Susan Harris, gardens in D.C. and also has a D.C. Urban Gardener website and one on Sustainable Gardening (see her profile in sidebar for links). There’s also a terrific blogroll for further reading.
Not solely to do with gardening, but Urban Farmer Novella Carpenter has some fabulous tales of her own and some very helpful links. Her blog is located at http://yourcityfarmer.blogspot.com/
I like http://straightfromthefarm.wordpress.com– good recipes as well!
Just wanted to mention that I think the dash at the end of Sarah’s link messed it up so that people didn’t miss out on a cool blog:
http://straightfromthefarm.wordpress.com/
Thanks for the link, Sarah! That’s my favorite so far and they have such great pictures.
It’s not a blog about gardening, but Get Rich Slowly often features info on growing veggies(and canning) – this is the most recent post, and I’m all jazzed to do some apartment-bound veggie growing because of it. (Well, this, and the TN post about the Topsy Turvy. “Rat doots” will never cease to be funny.)
Toot toot! I have a front-yard garden in San Diego: http://tinyurl.com/6s2os8. It’s pretty much half garden, half kitchen talk.
A great gardening blog is http://www.gardenrant.com. They have a good blogroll too, with a link that’s about gardening by region. That should give you some great ideas. I love You Grow Girl as well, their forums are very helpful. Yay gardening!
It isn’t solely dedicated to gardening, but http://redneckmother.blogspot.com/ is a fabulous blog by a woman in Texas who gardens pretty much year round. She often chronicles her gardening exploits, and I believe she has recently begun uploading short podcasts related to gardening and sustainable living.
I’ve got a bunch of really choice ones, that come from years of reading gardening blogs. In an effort not to post every single one of them here, I’ll just post my little website:
http://sheeats.wordpress.com
Scroll down to the “Gardening Blogs” section et voila! Most of them just happen to be geographically-specific to the NE, too. Have fun!
A great blog about gardening in Brooklyn:
http://thebarktree.typepad.com/
There’s actually a directory of gardening weblogs from all over the world. Mine, from Austin, TX, is among them. You can search by area and find ones as close to you as possible: http://www.blotanical.com/
I’m SO glad this topic came up! We’ve been researching the feasibility and cost of starting our own mini-Victory Garden sort of thing (although in SW GA, which of course has a much more hell-like climate than the NE US). With food costs projected to hit a 20-year high, home gardening is one of the best things anybody could do for herself.
I’m trying this for the 3rd time. I hope it comes through this time.
Check out Gardenweb dot com’s forums (I’m trying it without a link, thinking maybe the link is the problem).
They have hundreds of forums dedicated to all the regions and most of the states in the US, as well as multiple other topics.
I’ve been a member for YEARS and everyone there is GREAT!
I just started one: eartheducation.blogspot.com. I’m just learning to garden, and this is a record of my trials and errors. It’s the Southeast, not the Northwest, but some of our experiences will overlap.
The Hedgewizard’s Diary (http://hedgewizardsdiary.blogspot.com/) is one I like to read. His thing is post-peak oil self-sustaining plot farming. I’ve never tried it myself, but it sounds to me like he’s got some interesting ideas about organic and low-impact small scale agriculture. He’s in England, so maybe more rain and less snow that the US NE, but the planting and growing seasons may be similar. The original poster may find the site helpful.
I’m just starting out with reading gardening blogs, in preparation to attempt some small scale apartment growing. (We’re moving in June – bigger apartment, yay! No balcony, boo.)
I’ve bookmarked the Toronto Balcony Farmer http://tinyurl.com/6kyykx
which is geared more specifically towards small space/container gardening, and does some flowers as well, but has some good general tips on recognizing problems/pests and does some vegetable growing.
Funtimehappygardenexplosion is in California, so wrong climate, but has awesome tips (she recently got leftover carrot tops to sprout and regrow! you can recycle the parts of root vegetables you don’t eat and grow whole new ones! OMG!!!!) http://tinyurl.com/6qt5ug
Now I’ll check out all the other links, too! Hooray! Excellent Vine.
I know you asked for blogs, but I’d like to recommend a book as well. “The $64 Tomato” is a look back on the process of creating, maintaining, and living with a large, as-organic-as-possible garden by a guy in lower NY state (He doesn’t say exactly where but it’s a small town about an hour and a half from NYC). It is both funny and interesting, and he has a lot of valuable experience with designing and maintaining a yard garden (his is so large it’s practically a mini-farm) and dealing with pests. As well as a realistic look at the costs versus benefits of his (admittedly overambitious) garden project with the benefit of hindsight. It’s not a straight up how-to book, more of a memoir sort of, but it’s an entertaining read.
I recommend it even more strenuously if you’re A) putting in a garden in a yard, rather than apartment/balcony/whatever, B) growing your own food to save money C) are a novice and D) live in an area with enough open space/woods that you have deer.
Also if you google the book title he has a website. With a blog with more garden adventures. Whee!!
I second yougrowgirl.com. They also have a very active (and friendly) forum with lots of good info.
Thank you, everyone! I’m so excited to follow some of these blogs. I’ve bookmarked all of them, and scanned a little bit of each one, and it has confirmed that Tomato Nation was the right place to turn for good reading recs.
@ Carrie: I love your garden plan drawing!
@ Cait: Thanks for sharing that NY Times article. So interesting/inspiring.
I also love the fact that many of the blog recs are actually Tomato Nation readers’ blogs. Thanks Sars for bringing so many smarties together. Wish I could send you all homegrown soybeans and kale.