Is it just me, or is the warm weather being a tease, coming out for a few days only to turn cold again? Not that I care a paw lick about the cold - I have a nice warm fur coat - but when it gets too cold my Mommie shuts the windows and I cannot sit in them and sun myself! No matter...the nice weather is coming for good, soon, and with it Mommie's garden - the most wonderful place on earth, full of large leaf plants that are perfect for me to crawl under and hide as I watch the world go by! In the spirit go garden celebration, I am recommending a gardening blog this week! I suggest you head on over to
by Simon Eade of Kent, United Kingdom
Why do I suggest this blog over all of the other gardening blogs that are out there? Besides the obvious play on the author's last name? There are several reasons, ranging from pure bias for the people of Kent (my Mommie's ancestry traces back to Kent) to the credentials of Mr. Simon Eade, to the ease of navigating the page; not to mention the enxcellent web-design work.
The Garden of Eaden is a site for people who want to learn how to garden from a professional, but don't know where to begin. Simon Eade is a professional horticulturalist and gardening writer, and has been featured on several British television shows where he offers his expert gardening advice to viewers who are probably just as lost as you - if they weren't, they would be outside in the garden; not inside, watching it on the telly!
The Garden of Eaden is dedicated to "Combining good gardening practice with sound organic and environmental advice", so you will find a variety of topics from which to choose - feel free to dig in anywhere that interests you! The site offers a Blog Index that is alphabetized by category - starting with Bulbs, Corms, and Tubers and finishing up with Wildlife and the Environment (my Mommie's favorite is Medicinal Plants). Most of the categorical headings feature a blog, video, or full-color picture offering explanation or information on the overview topic, followed by a long list of blogs related to each specific topic being covered (also alphabetized), such as Are Slug Pellets Poisoning Our Wildlife? (found under Pests and Diseases) or the particularly interesting Gardening In The Arctic Circle - Greenland (found in Plant Myths, Legends, and History). Before reading this article, I know I never thought of the Arctic Circle as a good place to grow crops, although I suppose it should be the obvious choice for cold weather crops like potatoes, cabbage, and radishes.
For the armchair gardener, The Garden of Eaden offers plenty to read in the form of informative blogs and vlogs (video blogs), which offer a National Geographic feel to the site - check out Living Dinosaur Shark - The Frilled Shark to see what I mean, and you may find yourself drawn into spending the day exploring the other topics listed, as well.
For the active gardener, there are plenty of gardening tips and tutorials on how to properly seed and grow various vegetables (Gardener Eade was discussing onions on my last visit to his page, earlier this week), which is when I also learned how to grow strawberries from seed - a tutorial I will be showing my Mommie, so she can grow her own, in addition to picking her own (something I mentioned in my review of Stuff White People Like just a few weeks ago!). Some of the blogs seemed a little tame (really now, How to Grow Cucumbers from Seed? This one just seems a little too obvious, although I did learn that cucumbers originated in India and have been cultivated for over 3,000 years now, so I guess that blog serves a purpose, too).
I have some mixed emotions about the way The Garden of Eaden constantly plugs its Garden of Eaden Seed Shop, an online store where you can purchase any of the seeds that the blog is discussing. On the one hand, it is marketing brilliance to offer the seeds being discussed for convenient sale; but on the other hand, I think it might pull people who are not ready to commit to gardening into the idea that they, too, can grow their own; essentially setting people up for a rather pricey failure (gardening, while not an expensive pastime in the long-run, can be costly at the start). Well, caveat emptor, right?
Last but not least, one of my favorite features of The Garden of Eaden is that is offers recipes that feature the goodies that you have grown in your garden! Imagine making homemade tomato soup with tomatoes grown from your very own garden? Or even an old-fashioned fruit chutney (is there any other kind of chutney besides fruit?) from fruits fresh-picked form your local farm? I have to be honest....I may skip my Sunday afternoon nap today and pester my Mommie to learn how to make homemade gelato from the blueberries she is planning on growing this summer...but then, blueberry season is still a few months away, so I suppose my afternoon nap can happen after all - just as soon as you put down that Sunday newspaper so I can crawl all over it!
Snuggles,
Tazi
Ask Tazi! is ghostwritten by a human with a Bachelors of Arts in Communications. Tazi-Kat is not really a talking feline.
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