February is finally behind us. Granted, this year it wasn’t the frigid, grey nightmare it usually is, but it’s still nice to see it wilt away. Now that we’re in the month of spring, we can look forward to the greening of the landscape.
If you’re a perennial gardener, or hoping to grow into one, now is the time to start sowing for the season. A good place to nurture your knowledge is gardeningknowhow.com. The website is lush with information on many aspects of gardening.
The navigation menu at the top of the page lets you branch out to all areas of the site. The section links — which include Gardens, Houseplants, Problems, Lawn Care, Composting and Gardening Help — are like trunks. Each one sprouts limbs that break the general categories into subcategories. Each limb then sprouts branches that lead to even more specific content.
For instance, nested under the Gardens link are Edible Gardens, Gardening How to, Ornamental Gardens and Special Gardens. Under each of these dropdown links are buried even more sections. Edible Gardens has links for Fruit, Grains, Herbs, Nut Trees and Vegetables. Picking the Fruit link takes you to 90 more links of specific fruits, from apples to wonderberries. Each specific fruit link takes you to a page with numerous articles covering planting, care, troubleshooting and more.
The first five sections yield a bounty of information on different aspects of gardening. The sixth section, Gardening Help, features more resources. There’s a link to the Gardening Know How blog site. The blog features more articles, trends, Q & As, events, virtual garden tours, giveaways and more.
The Gardening Help section also has a link to the site’s free app. The app allows you to take the information from the site out into the field with you, set reminders for planting tasks and share your success with others.
This section also has a link to a companion site that allows you to ask seasoned green thumbs your gardening questions. You also can apply for school and community garden sponsorships, locate local extension offices that support gardeners, and identify the planting zone that you live in, which will help you pick plants that will thrive in your area.
The site is more of a vegetable garden than a flower bed. It is fertile ground that will cultivate your gardening knowledge, but it isn’t blooming with beautiful imagery. In fact, it has its share of garden pests in the form of swarms of annoying pop up ads. If you don’t mind poking around the weeds, you’ll find lots of good information and the occasional blossom.
Kevin OʼNeill has been a staff artist for The Times-Tribune since June 1993. In addition to doing illustrations and infographics and designing pages for the paper’s print and electronic publications, he writes InSites, a weekly column about websites and apps. Contact: koneill@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9100 x5212