I was wondering if you all might be willing to share recommendations for your favorite gardening websites..not necessarily those that sell things..but those that have interesting articles worth reading is basicallyl what i'm looking for.

I'm an information junkie, and gardening and landscaping information are some of my best and most enjoyable reading material.

Thanks in advance for sharing

GardenWeb.com is pretty good, LOTS of topics.  The advertising is very annoying, as it's now owned by iVillage.  But it's a popular site with many knowledgeable people.  Once you sign up, you can ask questions and have the answers sent to you as email, as well as on the thread.

It is probably one of the best sites for Winter Sowing, and is referenced by Trudi Davidoff's Winter Sowing website at http://www.wintersown.org/wseo1/How_to_Winter_Sow.html   

Trudi is a genius (I think).  She first came up with the idea several years ago on the GW site about sowing seeds outdoors in fall and winter, saying that she had been experimenting with some seed species and varieties, basing her idea on two basic premises:  many plants will naturally reseed, no matter what environment, and she had noticed that many species/varieties had 'cold' names, like 'Siberian', "Canadian', etc. 

I've been doing it for four years or so, and it works great, esp for the ones that need winter chilling and you don't have space in your refrigerator. 

I have a thread here that gives the bare bones, under the Permaculture section:  http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums/955_0/permaculture/winter-sowing

ATTRA has a large, informative site on sustainable gardening and farming at http://www.attra.org/ ; (It used to be called appropriate technology Transfer for Rural Areas, but they changed the name to National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, but still kept the acronym ATTRA, probably because it was easier to say than NSAIS (and too similar to the stupid and dreaded NAIS).

Sue

thanks Sue I wrote those down and will check them out right away, i need INPUT..

As for the winter sowing, I have been doing that too, but more information is always helpful..i haven't done as much as i would like to..anyway..

Here winter is like 8 or 9 months of the year..esp this year when we got snow early October and usually still have freezing in June..

checked out those internet sites and blogs and forums attached, some were quite interesting thank you

Also Dave's Garden, huge database.  It does cost to join, but if you google a plant name with 'ave's', like 'polygonum dave's', you can do a lot of searching.

I don't think it costs MUCH to join, but I'm too poor to fritter my money away. 

Sue

Of course got to give a shout out to Plants for a Future database. www.pfaf.org
It has lots of info for tons of plants, and how to design them into food forests.

But it's international, so sometimes I feel like the truth is stretched a bit. Does that Really take part shade? Are those flowers Really that edible?
but they're doing a great job.

It seems like every so often on the permaculture listserve, http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture, someone will talk about another database they're creating. I haven't stayed up on which ones are working well or not...

will check out those, the idea of growing things in a forest does appeal to me because reforestation was my number one goal of this property when we bought it, there was nearly nothing growing here and I felt like my life was bare open  to the world, and it got worse in 1975 when my inlaws moved in next door. I planted trees like wildfire, and my father in law loved to mow them down with his riding mower..wahhh. anyway, i managed to get trees growing and now have my property surrounded by a lot of full grown trees after nearly 38 years. Therefore, reforestation has made a large part of my property either baby or nearly full grown forests.  In one area I have very very heavy dark shade and not much will grow there, as it is evergreen, but it is so beautiful I don't much care if nothing grows under it..there are a few non food items that do make it in a few of the sunier corners and then the aegopodium that I mentioned on one of the forums, which now I'm aware is edible and will try it.

I have a tiny baby woods about 100 feet behind my house next to a baby pond, this is mostly baby  ash trees and there are a few wild raspberries in there but it needs a lot of work, it is very open.

I also have a nurse forest about 250 feet behind my house that is mostly quaking aspen trees, that I've been working on getting other trees to grow in now that the aspen are big enough to nurse them, only a few trees are growing large there, maple and ash, but I have ordered seedlings from catalogs this spring for over a dozen nut trees, this is the highest and dryest of our property which is mostly very wet, so the only place safe for the long taproot of the nut trees. However, there is a problem with the Juglone, as I have ordered one each of black walnut, butternut and carpathian walnut, which I will group, but not sure what i can grow under them with that juglone problem..Maybe this site on forest plants will be helpful there.