Web Site Provides Resources for Home Gardeners

Home vegetable gardeners can find advice from experts on planting vegetables, protecting gardens against pests and more on the Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service's vegetable gardening Web site, "Vegetable Tips: Resources for Easy Gardening."

Rosie Lerner, Purdue Extension horticulture specialist, said the site was launched last year to pool resources that home vegetable gardeners would find useful.

"With tough economic times, we anticipated there would be an increased interest in beginning a garden," Lerner said. "That was true last year, and it seems like it will continue this year."

The site is organized chronologically and walks visitors through the steps in growing vegetables. The site includes sections on "Getting Started," "Planning," "Planting" and "Growing." New gardeners can find information on tools to use, crops to grow and budgets for a vegetable garden.

Lerner said the site combines resources from several College of Agriculture departments, including Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Entomology, Agronomy, and Botany and Plant Pathology, as well as Purdue's Plant and Pest Diagnostic Laboratory.

Lerner said that even if a gardener has been growing vegetables for a while, the site provides links to resources for problems such as pests, diseases and weeds.

The vegetable gardening Web site can be accessed at http://www.extension.purdue.edu/gardentips/vegetables.