If you hunger for good gardening podcasts as much as I do, you know they’re hard to find. Here’s my list of favourites, from the unmissable at number one to the merely OK at number eight. I’ve given the web address of the feed; I hope this will let you track down the show and subscribe to it with whatever podcast tool you use. I use Google Listen on an Android phone, and I’ve created a folder in Google Reader called “Listen Subscriptions” that lets me add any new podcast if I know its Web address.

I know that all sounds a bit technical. If you have any questions, let me know, and I’ll try to help you.

1. Gardeners’ Corner with Cherrie McIlwaine
   Feed URL: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/northernireland/garden/rss.xml
   My all-time favourite. Host Cherrie is a true radio talent, painting evocative pictures of the gardens she visits, making everything sound magical and intriguing. It’s the one podcast I really miss if it’s not available immediately after its usual Saturday recording date. The show, broadcast by BBC Radio Ulster in Northern Ireland, has also hit on the perfect mix of phone-ins, visits to stunning gardens, chats with experts, road shows, and on-site help with listeners’ gardens. About 22 minutes per episode.
2. The Greendays Gardening Panel with Steve Scher
   Feed url: http://www.kuow.org/rss.php?program=garden
   KUOW radio in Seattle has put together an excellent Tuesday gardening panel which takes questions by telephone and from its Facebook page, hosted by Steve Scher with advice from Willie Galloway (perky veg expert), Greg Rabourn (conservationist and tree guy) and Marty Wingate (the one who uses Latin plant names). I love their no-nonsense approach and the satisfying 50-minute format, and their knowledge about what works in the Pacific Northwest and their willingness to share it is evident. I wish they’d use more Latin names; I once spent a half an hour googling for the ground cover plant “kinnickkinnick” (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi).
3. Gardening with Tim and Joe – Tim Crowther and Joe Maiden
   Feed URL: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/leeds/gwtj/rss.xml
   This folksy advice show from BBC Radio Leeds is notable for its insights on growing fruit and vegetables, as well as routine care of garden plants like roses, chrysanthemums and more. I like the “back to basics” feature, and gardener Joe Maiden’s decades of experience shine through, although I wish he wouldn’t call every plant of the week “absolutely fantastic”. Short and sweet, just 12 minutes per episode.
4. A Way To Garden with Margaret Roach
   Feed URL: http://am1020whdd.com/rss/individual.php?id=119&title=A%20WAY%20TO%20GARDEN%20WITH%20MARGARET%20ROACH
   This US gardening luminary writes the “A Way to Garden” blog and has just published a new book, “And I shall have some peace there,” about the New York garden she commuted to for two decades and now lives in permanently. Host Jill could do with sounding more in charge, but I like Margaret’s insights on seed sowing, managing a mature garden, and why going organic is worth it. About 20 minutes per episode.
5. Gardeners’ Question Time with Eric Robson or Peter Gibbs
   Feed URL: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/gqt/rss.xml
   This weekly BBC radio broadcast is a must-listen for the range of unrehearsed questions the experts can answer, and although I like Peter Gibbs, I wince at episodes hosted by Eric Robson, who manages to be jolly and disdainful in the same breath. The conflicting and/or bad advice given by the expert panel can become wearing (why did they just advise listeners not to bother doing a big tidy up of last season’s fallen rose leaves? David Austin experts told me the February clean-up is a golden rule for preventing ills like blackspot, and I believe them.) I do appreciate many of the insights from panellists like Bob Flowerdew and pest expert Pippa Greenwood, despite her recent broad slur against gardening blogs. About 50 minutes per episode.
6. HearSay with Cathy Lewis and Jim Orband
   Feed URL: http://www.whro.org/home/html/podcasts/hearsay/podcast.xml
   This podcast from Virginia would be much higher up the list if it were more frequent, but Jim Orband only joins Cathy once a month, and their chat doesn’t have its own feed, so you need to keep an eye on the episodes and download the ones with Jim. He takes phone-in questions from listeners, and his willingness to share knowledge (and gardeners’ hunger to learn) is wonderful to behold — listen and marvel as he gives out his e-mail address for people to send in extra questions. I do like the banter between Cathy and Jim; she’s a truly likable host.
7. North Country Public Radio – Cooperative Extension horticulturist Amy Ivy talks to Todd Moe
   Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TopStoriesFromNCPR
   Amy’s interviews with Todd are too new to me to rank higher on the list, and like the Cathy Lewis podcast, this is another one that doesn’t break out its gardening into a separate feed. But I’m now watching out every Monday for Amy’s segment, which gives practical, seasonal advice I appreciate. About 10 minutes per show.
8. Dean of Green
   Feed URL: http://www.wglt.org/podcasts/Dean_of_Green.xml
   Sultry-voiced Laura Kennedy speaks to Don Schmidt of the Illinois State University School of Biological Sciences. Laura’s incessant station identification (WGLT) is irritating, but Don Schmidt is incredibly knowledgeable and his enthusiasm is infectious. I’ve picked up a few useful tips on everything from moving peonies to the biological inner workings of plants. Super short, only about seven minutes per episode. Don takes questions from anyone, anywhere, just submit yours online at — yes, you guessed it — WGLT.org.

Attention broadcasters and bloggers – we want more, quality gardening podcasts. Why has the Scotland’s Gardens podcast has gone off air? And someone tell me why the otherwise useful and veg-centric UK online gardening community GardenersClick.com has made its GC podcast unsubscribable-to. (You can only listen to it within the walled garden of GardenersClick. Must do better, GardenersClick.) There must be hundreds of thousands of gardeners out there who, like me, would love to listen more and learn more, and would certainly be disposed to remember the names of sponsors who back such podcasts.

Do you know any other good gardening podcasts I could listen to? Do tell.

It’s not often I feel personally slighted by something on the radio, but, like super blogger Veg Plotting, I was a bit stung by last week’s comments by gardening expert Pippa Greenwood about know-nothing gardening bloggers. (In answer to a question about bloggers identifying pests and diseases, Pippa said, “I’m always very wary of information on blogging websites, because half of it’s bunkum, and it’s quite obvious that people don’t know what they’re identifying.”)

As VP has already so ably argued, expert gardeners like the Gardener’s Question Time Panel and other celebrity gardeners have been known to give misguided advice or undertake drastically wrong gardening practices. So even if bad guidance were rife among gardening blogs, they would by no means be the only guilty parties.

But my own experience is that gardening blogs don’t give bad advice. Most I writers I read — from gardening journalists like Lia and Jane to well-spoken enthusiasts like Jean and Lisa – publish blogs that are journals of what works and what doesn’t in their own gardens, which helps me avoid mistakes. Even more helpfully, the best gardening blogs are chronicles about the gardener’s relationship with his or her outside space. Although many writers start their blog believing they’ll be giving out advice, many find their posts end up being more searching, more philosophical, and that’s what I love about the blogs I follow.

When advice is doled out, I’m comforted to see it’s usually based on first-hand experience. The comment stream that follows blog posts entails fruitful chats among readers, and authors are happy to stand corrected if a reader points out an error, an omission, or indeed a misidentification of a pest or disease. It’s this conversation which makes blogs live and breathe, and which has made me get over my initial journalist’s suspicion of the medium.

As a journalist myself, I was a blog denier for many years, seeing blogs as nothing better than a mob’s mouthpiece, accuracy optional. In journalism school we revered facts and were trained to question everything we heard (“If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out,” my professor told me). When blogs rolled around, it pained me to see unsubstantiated rumour and opinion being elevated to the same level as proper journalism. I’ve gotten over it. Blog dross falls to the bottom, quality rises, and the chance blogs offer to discuss and interact is worth the occasional mistake.

I wonder if the comments by Pippa Greenwood — who, I must say, is my favorite GQT panelist, with tremendous knowledge and a great skill for drawing pictures on radio — were motivated by a similar, deeply held suspicion of the blogosphere.

So can you trust the advice you read on gardening blogs? Always consider your own climate, soil type and other environmental factors (exposed? shady?) before applying the advice you hear online — that’s just sensible, and most avid gardeners would do this instinctively. The real threat I see to anyone seeking advice online — on anything from horticulture to medical conditions, child development to business marketing — isn’t blogs per se, but rather the nonsense topical content which only exists in order to provide search engine visibility for a website.

I know you’ve come across this kind of thing, stuffed with keywords designed to make Google sit up and take notice. “The thing about gardening with roses is that roses, when they’re in your garden, bring the scent of roses into your garden all summer long. There’s no doubt that, if you grow roses in your garden, bringing them into a house is also a great way to bring the scent of the garden into your home with roses.”

When looking for your answers, use common sense, get a second opinion if you’re very worried, or consult expert panels like GQT or or the immensely helpful Facebook pages connected to other radio shows, like BBC Radio Leeds Gardening with Tim and Joe or KUOW Seattle’s Greendays gardening panel. These guys know what they’re talking about, and you might even get your question read on air.

Until now, I’d never bothered with seed sowing in summer. The seedling fatigue of spring usually leaves me uninterested in repeating the whole affair during July and August. But two things have come together this year to change all that: my sharper awareness of the way the garden grows like mad in July; and the Eatin’ Project, where my early success in growing edibles has inspired me to try to keep the crops coming.

I listen to the folksy “Gardening with Tim and Joe” from BBC Radio Leeds, and a few weeks ago gardener Joe Maiden was encouraging everybody to sow more French beans and carrots right away to get strong young plants developing. I did, and they have. This evening I planted out some of the young dwarf French beans “Masterpiece” (thanks for the recommendation, Marc Diacono): their little root balls were full and raring to go.

The growth in all corners is rampant. I was stunned to see a fab root system on a bit of pelargonium that I’d knocked off the plant and had thrown into a cup of water. I planted it up and it’s flowering now – the whole process took just a few weeks. So I tried the same with a bit of Aster Frikartii Monch I’d yanked off the plant and sure enough, voila, roots. Today I’ve also sown dianthus seed; cuttings would be easier, but it’s my mother’s favourite flower, and these fell from the pinks I’d cut for her bedside when she was staying with me earlier this month. It is always hard to see her go back to Boston, and I couldn’t throw these seeds away when I was clearing up her bedside table this morning. If I can get some of these to germinate, that’ll mean something to me.

This is the first year I’ve tried to exploit these few weeks when Edinburgh is briefly California: long bright days, warm soil, and easy abundance everywhere in the garden. In past years I’d noticed how the borders went ballistic during July, but I’d never used it. July is a wave I’m riding this year instead of a flood that’s swamping my borders, and I like it. This is the first time that I’ve slashed my aquilegias to the ground in June, and I wasn’t afraid to do it, knowing it would give everything else more space during July and August.

It’s been a revelation to sow and nurture seedlings in summer: nothing like the slog of sowing in the dim days of spring in Scotland, where equal parts willpower and liquid seaweed are the only thing that keep the seedlings going.

Do you ever feel that your garden is a mute entity whose signs and moods you spend years studying? I think I’m starting to speak her language.