Online gardening tools augment traditional rakes and shovels

By Rick Castellini, Special to PRIME Since about all I can provide in the gardening department is tilling power, picking weeds, and eating the delicious bounty, I asked my friend Trudi for some advice. She loves gardening and has one of the greenest thumbs I know. She also uses the web to help keep her gardening passion both fun and productive and shared some great web sites with me that I could pass on to you. If you are a Web user and a gardener, you probably already know about Gurney's (gurneys.com). They have been in business since 1866 and have a thriving mail order and web business. However, in addition to their easy to navigate online catalog, don't miss out on the great advice and gardening articles on their blog (gurneysblog.com). Some other popular and mainstay gardening web sites include: Gardener's Supply Company (gardeners.com) and the National Gardening Association web site (garden.org). Blogs (web journals) offer a fantastic way to learn and be entertained at the same time. Trudi told me about a fantastic blog called In My Kitchen Garden (inmykitchengarden.blogspot.com). Started by a displaced California woman who bought a farm in central Missouri, she writes about raising an organic garden, cooking and baking, taking care of sheep, chickens, donkeys on her small farm and also shares hints and tips that she has learned the hard way. It's a beautiful Web site and worth a visit to read her articles and recipes and see the tremendous amount of gardening and cooking links she has shared not mention some inspiring photography of fruits, vegetables and more. For you organic gardeners, Trudi recommended the Seeds of Change all organic gardening web site (seedsofchange.com). Seeds sell everything from seeds to live plants, gifts, tools, and gardening supplies. And like the Gurney web site, you can also browse lots of great how-to articles and subscribe to their newsletter. One section of their site that attracted my attention, was their Urban Gardening section. It is geared to just urban dwellers, but any gardener who has limited space and wants to still grow vegetables. The last two sites that Trudi shared with me for this article, are High Country Gardens (highcountrygardens.com) and Garden Guides (gardenguides.com). High Country Gardens focuses on mostly flower gardening with their main emphasis being on using as little water as possible. They also cover some low water vegetable gardening and lawns, but again the bulk of their coverage is flowers and other non-edible plants. Garden Guides, however, covers a vast swath of gardening topics with articles about planning, maintaining, and improving gardens of all types and sizes. Garden Guides offers an extremely active Community Forum where you can interact with other green thumbs to share tips, ask for advice, and make new online gardening friends. Let's all stand up and give Trudi a round of applause for sharing such a great array of web sites to get your online gardening juices flowing. With so many Web sites available to choose from, I always find it helpful to talk with someone who has done a lot of the culling already. I think the sites she shared with us for this article will give you all you need to give your 2010 garden a huge boost from the knowledge gained from reading these great online and free resources. May your vegetables be bountiful, your roses be aphid free, and your bees be happy buzzing in your flower pots! Rick Castellini is an author, computer consultant, and hosts a computer radio show from Colorado. Visit his web site at www.HelpMeRick.com for new tips every week and sign up for his free weekly email newsletter. You can also follow Rick on Twitter @HelpMeRick