Rain delay: A few of my favorite gardening blogs

The rain continues here, making southeastern Wisconsin just one of many places with totally depressing weather this week. At least we're not experiencing the storms and flooding that so many other areas are.

Anyway, it's putting a major damper on my ability to take some pictures of what is happening in the yard, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to share some of my garden must-reads with you.

Here they are in no particular order:

A Way to Garden

This is the blog and website of the esteemed Margaret Roach, who's memoir "And I shall have some peace there" I recently read (good read by the way). This is my go-to spot for information on all kinds of plants, trees and shrubs. She usually has very good photos of mature plants so you get a real-life idea of what they look like. She also has a great refrigerator dill pickle recipe on her site that I used last year and loved.

 

 

North Coast Gardening

Genevieve's blog is one of the first I found and I've loved it from the beginning. Although some of her plant recommendations are specific to the north coast (California, Seattle, Portland, etc.), most of her posts are full of advice that applies regardless of where you garden. But what I really love NCG for is Gen's wonderful product reviews. She really gives things a thorough test (not the "I got this free so therefore you should love it" kind of reviews), often in a video, which is really helpful. I've purchased at least five things based on Gen's reviews and she's not led me astray yet.

 

 

Dirt Simple

I love this blog. It is written by Deborah Silver who has an amazingly cute garden store and landscape design business in Detroit. If you look at some of my container posts, you'll see some of her images. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do containers better than she does. Her blog is full of great information, but it is also a great source of inspiration.

 

 

Each Little World

Linda, who, with her husband Mark, writes Each Little World has become a friend and it turns out we have a lot in common beyond gardening, but I ELW is on my must-read list because it is wonderfully written and always interesting. And any picture of their garden has a calming influence on me. I'm serious about that; just looking at their garden is rejuvenating. I hope someday to see it in person.

 

 

Our Little Acre

Kylee has won several awards for her blog and you can see why. She has nicely written posts and beautifully composed pictures. Plus, I recently met her at the Proven Winners Outdoor Living Extravaganza and she's super sweet too! This week she's one of the lucky bloggers at P. Allen Smith's house for the Garden to Blog event and I've been enjoying her updates on Twitter.

 

 

Dirt and Martinis

I actually found this blog via Twitter and I'm not ashamed to admit it was because of the name. Drinking while gardening is something I can proudly advocate for. This blog is part gardening, part recipes and a whole lot of fun.

 

Life on the Balcony

I love this blog for it's great ideas even though it's really geared toward people gardening in apartments and condos. Even thought I have much more room to garden than some people, Fern's blog is still fertile ground for inventive ways to garden.

 

Garden Rant

This is a group of four talented gardeners and writers ranting away about the gardening world. Sure, sometimes I get the feel they might be ranting for ranting's sake, but for the most part I like them because I share a lot of their philosophy: stop being so damn serious about gardening. Plus they get a ton of "guest ranters" who have some very interesting perspectives.

 

Of course I follow many more gardening blogs than I've mentioned here, but these are the ones I make sure not to miss a post on. What do you think? Am I missing something from my list. If you have a blog that I might have missed let me know about that too!

And for crying out loud, rain, go away!