Whether you have a house or an apartment, these are some of the best gardening websites, ebooks, and apps to cultivate your own little green patch.
When you have some extra time at home, seize the opportunity to add a little greenery. If you have a garden, you can use it to grow vegetables and herbs, or beautify it with flowers. Growing plants in apartments has been shown to improve mood and mental stability.
These gardening websites and apps have something in them for both beginners and experienced gardeners to reap what they sow.
1. A Way to Garden (Web): One of the Best Gardening Blogs for All Stages
Margaret Roach, the former editorial director of the Martha Stewart empire, set up a blog and wrote a book to share her gardening secrets. A Way to Garden is one of the most recommended must-read gardening resources on the internet.
The Garden Planting Calculator is a particular favorite on the web. It tells you when to lay seeds for different vegetables, herbs, and flowers. If you need to have a few weeks indoors with them first, you’ll get that calculation too.
A Way to Garden’s “chores by month” is also a popular guide to essential activities based on the season. Roach’s tips apply for the north-eastern USA, so consult the provided regional calendar and adjust accordingly. You’ll also want to take a look at the garden FAQs, where she answers beginner queries on various topics.
Apart from these three resources, A Way to Garden is a treasure-trove of information for gardeners both new and experienced. There’s also a podcast that you can listen to while you’re tending to your little patch.
2. GardenBeast (Ebooks): 7 Free Gardening Ebooks
Beginners can download seven ebooks for free from GardenBeast in PDF format. You can download one or all, it’s up to you. And you can print these out, load them up on your kindle, or use them for offline reading whenever you want. All it takes is to sign up for the newsletter, but you can always use a disposable email address for that.
The seven books are:
- Ultimate Organic Gardening for Beginners
- 51 Tips for Green House Gardening
- 100 Hints and Tips to Level Up Your Gardening
- Herbs 101: Ultimate Guide to Herbs for Beginners
- Vegetable Gardening for Beginners
- How to Attract Butterflies Into Your Garden
- Greener Living for a Greener World
The ebooks range from 16-52 pages, each tackling a different topic as you can see. The 100 Hints and Tips is especially useful for anyone, so download that no matter what. GardenBeast is also a full-fledged online magazine that you can check out for gardening news, resources, and guides.
3. Candide (Android, iOS): The Only Gardening App You’ll Need
Candide is a helpful gardening app to find inspiration and knowledge. In the app, you’ll find places to visit, knowledge of what to plant in your garden, and pictures from the community sharing what’s going on in their gardens.
The app is like a social network for gardening enthusiasts. The main options are share, ask a question, identify a plant, follow, trending, weather, and discover. Ask and Identify are the big winners here. Take a photo of a plant in your garden and the app will answer it. Similarly, ask a question and the community will chip in with their thoughts.
Scrolling the feed, you’ll find inspiration for different gardening projects, as well as tips and tricks. Check Candide’s content for various articles and guides, and along the way, make some friends with a green thumb.
Candide is available in the USA, UK, Ireland, and South Africa. You could download the APK and use it anywhere in the world too, but the information is localized to the above four regions.
Download: Candide for Android | iOS (Free)
4. Apartment Gardening (Ebook): Practical Guide to Gardening in Small Spaces
Jami Leigh of YoungWifesGuide.com wrote the go-to ebook for beginners who want to garden in an apartment or any small space. The ebook, titled “Apartment Gardening: A practical guide to growing vegetables in small spaces,” is widely cited and recommended across the internet.
The guide is for those just starting out, so it sticks to what matters: staying on budget, keeping it simple and practical for newcomers, and being mindful of space. You will learn how to pick the right area, soil, and seed for your apartment, sowing and harvesting patterns, and how to take care of the plants.
The guide is all about growing vegetables that you can eat. Once you’ve mastered that, look around the internet for other plants to grow in your apartment.
The 94-page book is available as a free PDF on her website, which you can download through the link below. You can also pay a small fee to get the book and additional worksheets.
Download: Apartment Gardening from YoungWifesGuide (PDF)
5. Charles Dowding (Web, YouTube): Learn the ‘No Dig’ Method of Gardening
Charles Dowding has been writing about gardening since the 1980s. He pioneered the “No Dig” method, which is all about disturbing the soil as little as possible. Dowding’s philosophy is that organisms in the soil will allow for natural aeration and drainage if you let them do what they do best. So by disturbing the soil less and feeding the organisms, you can adopt more sustainable and ecological gardening methods.
Dowding’s YouTube channel is full of fantastic videos about the concept and other gardening tips. Check out the short video above to get a 3-minute explanation of the technique from the man himself. If the No Dig method sounds interesting and you have questions, he probably answered it in the FAQs.
Start with Dowding’s beginner’s guide to the no dig method. While he is based in the UK, he offers advice on how to adapt the practices in any conditions. Dowding has a relaxing style in his YouTube videos, making gardening feel more accessible.
The Best Landscape and Garden Design Tools
The best gardening websites and apps will give you all the information you need, but when it comes time to implement it, you still need to do a lot of calculations. For planning your garden patch, calculating the sow patterns, and other estimates, turn to technology.
Try these best free online landscape and garden design tools to get started.
Read the full article: 5 Best Gardening Websites & Apps for Beginners to Garden Anywhere
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