More great garden blogs

Everyone’s blogging these days, and that includes gardeners. So each Thursday we poke around the Web to find a few of the most interesting gardeners and gardens.

I enjoy reading about others’ gardening experiences. Often, it's like a friendly conversation across the back fence. But I’ve also found that frequently I pick up tips and ideas that help me in my own garden.

That’s what happened when I dropped in on The Cottage Smallholder. It’s maintained by a family living in a 17th-century cottage on the border of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk in England.

Working toward self-sufficiency, they have a menagerie that includes four dogs, one Maran hen, four bantams, two guinea hens, a pair of bee hives, toads, frogs, and more.

Just before my visit to The Cottage Smallholder, Diggin' It had been discussing slugs and snails. So I was excited to read a remedy I’d never tried before:
She says that traps filled with "stale" milk work well. I hope so, because I'm going to give it a try.

Food is a regular topic at this site, and the recipes sound delicious, but the ingredients are in British measurements, of course.

For Americans, the recipes at Farmgirl Fare will be in the more familiar format, but just as tempting. Currently she’s discussing ways to use Swiss chard (including an appealing-looking Swiss Chard Tuna Salad).

I’ve already copied the directions for Summer in a Bowl so I can have it ready when my home-grown tomatoes begin ripening.

The writer lives on a remote 240-acre farm in central Missouri and posts lots of cute photos of baby farm animals – donkeys, lambs, goats.

The same person maintains InMyKitchenGarden, which is all about food – a handy site to bookmark with all the summer produce on its way.

In Australia, winter is one the minds of gardeners such as the one who writes about Scarecrow’s Garden, where the current harvest includes broccoli, peppers, lots of herbs, and four to six fresh eggs a day.

A woman and her husband (with children grown and on their own) live on a half-acre in the “dry Mid North of South Australia.” She details a life that’s fascinating to someone like me, who gardens halfway around the globe.

A current interest at Scarecrow’s Garden is Freedom Gardens , an expansion on the old Victory Garden idea from the World War II era. Although it has a worldwide reach, it’s based in California.

Which all goes to show how, thanks to the Web, we're all interconnected these days.