Online information resources for gardeners

It's that time of year again. If you're not lucky enough to live in a really warm climate, you're stuck researching and planning next years garden. I know this is also the time of year when new gardeners are making their first gardening decisions. This seems like the right time to be passing around those particularly good resources for new and old gardeners. Since so much gardening information is regional, I'm going to try to label each group of links so that people can easily sort out the most relevant to themselves. It would be nice if others can contribute their suggestions with similar bold headers. I know not everyone has as much time to explore links as I do. If you have a great universally applicable link, maybe universal would be a good heading.

SOUTHERN/SOUTHEASTERN USA

Finding this blog yesterday is what actually inspired me to start this topic. I've linked to the page that is from this time of year. https://sowtrueseed.com/articles/page/7/ They talk a lot about how to get the most from tradition vegetables, including things like succession planting, time to start transplants for fall and winter, and seed saving. If you're in the NC area, they have a lot of local events.

CENTRAL TEXAS (which I think is where the transition between SOUTHERN US/SOUTHWESTERN US meet so both areas may find it relevant)

I always like to link to this http://www.naturalgardeneraustin.com/what-to-do-in-january.html It's a month by month list of what to do in the garden including planting, fertilizing, pest prevention and pruning. This is mostly for zone 8 customers with tiny pockets of zone 9. If you're in the area they have free classes on organic gardening, urban chickens, bee keeping, pruning fruit trees... ect every weekend. Check the web page for the current class listings.


UNIVERSAL

This is a relatively recent thread someone made on permies https://permies.com/t/61417/Climate-analogues-find it didn't get much discussion, but I think that's because the original poster did such a complete job of sharing her information. I hadn't seen these maps before, but I have definitely found using these kinds of techniques to find new plant varieties goes a long way to having success with the first attempt.

A note about using the search function on permies, if you are looking for information on a topic that could fit in more than one forum (and this will be true for nearly all gardening info) make sure you're searching all available forums rather than one of the sub forums. Unfortunately you may have to scroll through several options but you'd be amazed how often the information you were looking for is already here. We're happy to answer questions, but often there is information that came up in the older discussion that won't come up in a new discussion. This is part of why I am so happy to see old threads resurrected. It helps keeps informational gems from being forgotten.

edit: grammar

This is a good one for searching:    

The PFAF Database

On our website, pfaf.org, you can search for over 7000 edible and medicinal plants using a number of search criteria including: common and Latin names, keyword, family, habitat and use (medicinal, edible or other).

Search techniques includes:

   search by name
   search by keyword
   you can browse plants common and Latin names by alphabetical letter
   you can browse plants by their family, habitat and use (medicinal, edible or other)
   you can search a plant by it use, for example whether it can be used for:

edible: e.g. coffee, chocolate, gelatine, oil
medicinal e.g. acrid, antacid, antibiotic, kidney
other e.g. alcohol. beads, bottles, fencing, fuel
special uses e.g. nitrogen fixer, hedge

You can do a more detailed search using the Search Properties section. This allows you to search for a number of plant features at once. For example you might want to search for a plant that needs light sandy soil, that is between 1m and 5m high and that likes shade. The database will find plants that have all 3 of these features.