Mike's Backyard Gardening

A serious lack of gardening lately has left me scouring the interweb for gardening websites and blogs that will see me through the winter months when it's too cold to be motivated outside.
Along with the the blogs I regularly read without fail (though I often forget to comment) that are listed on the right hand side I've managed to find a few new ones and one in particular has really had me hooked as it is full of brilliant information and tips.

It's called  Mike's Backyard Nursery and while many of you may already know of the website I'll explain what is interesting about Mike to those who aren't familiar with him.
Mike and his wife live in Ohio and have worked extremely hard, clawed their way out of bankruptcy and set up a successful business from their own home selling nursery plants. What amazes me about this guy having read his story in his own words is that he happily and enthusiastically shares his successes, his failures and his own methods with the general public despite residing in an area that is already rife with competition having at least 130 wholesale growers within a 10 mile radius of his property.
It's not often I read the 'about me' section of a website or blog because I feel I get a good idea of a persons character when reading their posts but something made me want to understand where Mike came from and what bought about this passion for sharing his business methods. His story is available here and it is well worth a read, in fact it wouldn't be out of place on the big screen.

Mike's Backyard Nursery is a website jam packed with useful information whether your passion is simply creating your own garden and propagating for it or if you're interested in using your own plant material and garden space and having a go at selling propagated plants from home. Mike's hints, tips and ideas will certainly have you saving money on plants whether it be from propagating, swapping or selling.

Mike also has some great ideas for building your own tools for the job and shows you how he makes these things work for him, such as these "propagation flats"

Mike also has hints and tips on all aspects of pruning, some of which may differ from what we think we already know such as "How to prune a Butterfly bush"

The information that Mike makes available to his followers doesn't end on his website, he has a Youtube channel you can subscribe to full of interesting videos he has made on various topics from topsoil to pruning to potting bench plans.
And he doesn't stop there either, Mike has created a FREE Ebook titled "The Gardener's secret handbook" which you can download FREE and is also available on Facebook

The points I have included in this post really are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Mikes website, it is literally full of information as is his Youtube channel and the Ebook link where there is an information bar on the left packed with further reading.

Now that I've filled you guys in I'm off back to Mike's to learn a bit more about how he does what he does.