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Putting Your Garden to Bed
Fall is here and for many gardeners a subtle sense of panic begins. Questions arise that seem like life or death to your piece of paradise. When and how deep do you plant bulbs? Do you mulch bulbs? Should you fertilize your perennials one last time before winter? Which plants do you cut back and how far should you go? When faced with all these crucial questions what is a gardener, especially a new gardener, to do?
A visit to your local nursery is in order, but if you want to have some information before you visit, help is just a mouse-click away as there are now thousands of gardening-related Web sites full of great advice. But simply running an Internet search is not the place to start, unless you'd like to skim through three million-plus Web sites. What follows is a description of sites worth visiting to get the "lay of the land." Internet land that is!
Take a visit to Ohio State University's Web Garden http://webgarden.osu.edu/. Browse through the "Garden Questions" for answers related to almost any gardening need. Use the "Plant Dictionary" for detailed descriptions of more than 600 plants, including optimal growing conditions, usage, habitat and popular varieties. The more scientifically minded gardener might try "PlantFacts" for horticultural profiles of more than 20,000 plants. Almost any garden need can be met at Web Garden, which is why it should be your first stop on the Internet garden pathway.
As you meander further, you'll run across commercial sites that try to provide one-stop shopping for any level of gardener. Sites like the National Gardening Association http://www.garden.org/ or HGTV http://www.hgtv.com/ offer gardeners excellent how-to projects, "ask-the-experts" information, group-discussion lists, kids gardening tips and links to garden shops and nurseries online. For example, at NGA, one can find his or her planting zone by zip code, receive biweekly, regional gardening reports via email, get seasonal garden-care advice and shop online at the NGA garden shop. Meanwhile, at HGTV, one will find a list of upcoming gardening shows, an online chat, a gardening newsletter, and an extensive list of gardening projects and how-tos, like "how to put your garden to bed."
A little farther down the path, and you come across a society for almost every ornamental plant from the American Hemerocallis Society to the Herb Society of America. Try the American Horticultural Society's "Gardening Connections Links/Resources" page at http://www.ahs.org/hotriculture_internet_community/index.htm for an extensive list of societies and other gardening links.
Finally, the path winds its way to the Garden Gate http://garden-gate.prairienet.org/, but this is not the end of your adventure, only the beginning. Here, you'll find a Web site blooming with annotated links to additional gardening sites. There are enough links for online reading, learning, shopping, chatting and viewing to keep you busy right through next spring.
So when you have a crucial gardening question that could mean the life or death of your perennials, don't despair. A trip down the Internet gardening pathway to just one of the sites listed here should yield abundant results for the brownest of thumbs.
—Cynthia Tysick, University Libraries