Gardening: Finding Your Green Thumb

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By Leanne Nighman

Growing vegetables is something at which I always wanted to succeed. I have this perfect gardening image of standing in a white sundress, lovingly watering my lush, bug-free garden while my baby daughter sits in the grass quietly playing with her doll. Well, for a vivid imagination I can give myself an enthusiastic green thumb up, but the reality is I don't look good in white, bugs always know when I've stepped outside, and my baby daughter has never sat quietly for anything, especially not for a doll.

Undaunted by reality, I am determined to at least try to have the perfect garden this year. I have attempted to grow vegetables in the past, and hopefully I have learned from my mistakes. I think the biggest problem has been my ignorance about the plants. For instance, a few years ago I planted cauliflower seeds. I was so excited when I saw that one seed had taken because there was a green leaf poking through the earth. I watched it as it grew bigger and bigger. However, I was rather puzzled by the way it was growing. I didn't recall ever seeing cauliflower growing on such a tall stalk. When it bloomed into a sunflower, I realized that perhaps it was not such a good idea to put a bird feeder full of sunflower seeds in my garden.

This year, however, I have help from the internet. I am now armed with lots of information regarding how acidic my soil should be, what kind of sun exposure is required for certain plants, and what type of vegetables should not be grown next to one another. Also of great importance, given that I have a baby and two dogs, is finding information on controlling bugs without using pesticide.

To start with, I went to www.canadiangardening.com. It is useful in that it offers links to many other sites by specific gardening categories, and it indicates with a maple leaf flag which sites are Canadian. For those of us trying to grow cauliflower with sunflower seeds, www.canadiangardens.com is a really good site because of its simple language. It has good descriptions and basic directions for gardening, like tips on planning a vegetable garden and plot preparation. For the really adventurous, this site also provides information on hydroponics and, for the artistically inclined, dried flowers and topiary.

The site that I found most useful for landscaping and planning a flower garden was www.garden.com. They have an excellent way of finding plants by such categories as geographic zone and flower and foliage colour. It is an American site, so Canadians have to guess their temperature zone. If you decide to become a member, it is possible to use their database for designing your own garden.

While I was surfing, I decided to also look up information on indoor houseplants. I have had more luck growing these types of plants, but have had to get rid of a few because I have run out of places to put them safely out of reach of my one-year-old. Besides the obvious concerns of a pot coming down on her head, I realized that I also had to worry about her possibly eating the leaves. Just like the vegetable plants, I am ignorant of the what I am growing in the house. I bought them because they looked nice but I certainly could not say what they are called. To help with this, I have found an excellent site which I have bookmarked (and so should anyone else who has plants and children or pets). The site is www.blankees.com/house/plants. It provides photographs of plants with their names, but more importantly it provides toxicity information which comes from Agriculture and Agrifood Canada's Biological Resources Department. As part of its information, the site discusses which part of the plant is poisonous, the symptoms of poisoning for both humans and animals, as well as a further link to the Canadian Poisonous Plants Information System.

I can't wait for summer. Sitting outdoors, feeling the warmth of the sun, eating a fresh, crisp salad from my garden, and watching my cauliflower grow (close to the ground I hope)!

Leanne recently left her position as a Project Coordinator for an Information Technology firm in order to stay home with her one-year-old daughter. She continues to do Internet research, but now as a parent rather than an IT administrator. She hopes to help other parents find useful information on the Web.