Who doesn’t love a green, blooming balcony? There are hundreds of blogs that list tips and tricks to bring the picture-perfect image to your balcony. But, we all know it takes a lot more than pictures to sow and harvest herbs on a windowsill. I’ve just spent hours sifting through scores of urban gardening blogs to find a few that are helpful to novice gardeners.
My motive was to dig out blogs by urban Indian gardeners, but I was successful in finding only two that fit my criteria – frequency of updates, pictures, and well-documented steps and conducive conditions for growing plants.
Geek Gardener – is replete with information on container gardening and various varieties of vegetables to grow in a particular month in India. Despite the low frequency of posts, Geek Gardener is an excellent resource for growing vegetables in a tropical climate. Every post has pictures of plants at very stage from sowing to saplings and flowering to finally, harvesting the produce. The pictures are like a step-by-step guide for a novice gardener.
The Urban Gardener: Sunita’s obsession with greens is evident from her blog, The Urban Gardener. The site has a good mix of vegetables and flowering plants. I’m slightly biased towards sites with pictures as this is a hobby that is visually motivating. The Urban Gardener ranks high in the “good pictures” area.
Sunset: An unusual entry for a blog list. But what we do without this site and its encouraging how-tos. If you’ve not heard of Sunset magazine before, then I swear, you’ve missed something in life. Just kidding :) Stop reading and hop over to the site!
Life on the Balcony: I’ve saved the best for the last. Though Fern Richardson lives in southern California, there is a lot to learn from her blog for urban gardeners in India. A blog with a professional look, good categorization, easy navigability, and above all, frequently updated, makes it a must-have in your Reader.
If you are keen what the rest of the world grows through the year, here are a few of my favorites:
Japanese Gardener for the enticing look of veggies.
Singapore Plants Lover for the colourful flowers and novel containers
Totally Inept Balcony Gardener for the yellow lemons, blooms and creepers
If you have been reading a gardening blog for a while now and find it useful, please leave a link in the comments section for others to benefit.
Image courtesy:
Zucchini – Geek Gardener
Veggies – Life on the Balcony
9 Comments
Most garden blogs are about Bloom Days and other titles where they mostly post pictures. They are useful to find out names though. Few blogs that actually have help for novices.
GG blog is really good for vegetable gardening.
Raj Panda also has a good blog for growing vegetables. It is called Organic Kitchen Gardening …
Check it out.
Natti
Forgot to mention
http://fungardener.wordpress.com/
Good one too.
Natti
I have been following the geekgardener for quite some time now and he is really very inspiring.
I also follow the garden chronicles – talks about a variety of topics around flowers and foliage. http://jamesmissier.blogspot.com/
Thank you for the other links.
Hey, thanks for mentioning The Urban Gardener and also for the link. I’m so glad you like the photos… it’s very motivating to read that someone enjoys your work : )
Thanks for mention urban gardener
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mhmgc
Thanks for mentioning urban gardener
Very informative..
Just found your site. I’m always reading anything that pertains to gardening. It is one of my favorite hobbies. You have a lot of excellent and interesting information here.
Thanks for sharing,
Ben Church
For vegetable gardening I would like to mention Krushi, a kit by Urban Green which has made gardening easy. I tried it after I found out about it while trying to gather the supplies. Found it useful. Give it a try. http://multiplexurbangreen.com/mugblr/index.html