Posted on

10 Great Gardening Websites

Ramon Gonzales, a writer for Treehugger.com, recently published a list of his current 10 favorite gardening websites, and I’m pleased to be included in his list.

I’ve known Ramon as Mr. Brown Thumb for a number of years now.  He was one of the original garden bloggers, probably the first well known one from the Chicago area, and now very active with the preservation of heirloom varieties. Even though we’ve known each other, our paths strangely rarely cross, almost never commenting on each others blogs or participating elsewhere in the same discussions.

One of the things he said in the article linked to above is:

Unfortunately, the search engine results can be gamed and the best gardening websites aren’t always at the top of search results.

This is getting to be incredibly true by now.  Not just search engines, but site statistics and even supposedly private website log files, are all being gamed these days.  It’s getting to the point where such a huge percentage of the Internet traffic is manipulated by a few large companies, or people that pay these companies, that no one can tell anymore which sites exist because of commercial interests or the quality of their content, what’s popular and what’s not.  The only reliable thing we have left is word of mouth.

Not only does this list of garden websites include some of my favorites, but I also think Ramon himself is worth keeping an eye on.

Posted on

EU Seed Laws Struck Down by High Court…(not yet!)

[update:  I’ve been told this is a prejudicial opinion, thus not yet the ruling of the court and not yet a binding decision.  Hopefully we’ll have a more concrete ruling later.]

Yesterday an EU Advocate-General sided with French seed organization Kokopelli on the provision in EU law prohibiting the sale of unregistered varieties.

In reference to EU seed laws and related French regulations, the Advocate-General said they

“violate the principle of proportionality, free enterprise, free movement of goods, and the principle of non discrimination.”

The Advocate-General said the official seed catalog has

“nothing to do with plant health”

and

“it is up to farmers to decide which varieties they grow”

the Advocate-General added

“the fact that farmers are confined to the listed varieties greatly reduces genetic diversity in European fields.”

Unfortunately the original opinion was written in German, and as of the time of this post had not yet been translated into English.  You can read the opinion in a variety of non-English languages here.

Almost all of Kokopelli’s arguments were upheld, and most of the opposition’s arguments were not.