Anyone recommend an honest-to-goodness, legitimate Gardening Chat Room?
So many general chat sites list Gardening Rooms, but when I enter, I find mostly " bogus gardeners". They'll know nothing, nor even CARE, about gardening. Just joke around, want to "shoot the breeze" or get obnoxious. Forums are great, but sometimes, would like to have real-time conversations with other REAL gardeners who share love of gardening!

My daughter and I were talking about this today.
I'm glad some one ask. Maybe we talk OG into add one.

Hi,
I share an MSN community with a couple of other women and we just started to see some people join.
We usually find one another online between 7am and 9am and meet in the chat room. Saturday mornings between 8 and 9am and we stay on for a couple of hours chatting. Marion is from Wales so she's 5 hours later than us.
We've been able to help each other with some problems and ideas, share seeds and post pictures. We search the internet for answers when we don't have them amongst ourselves.
We have become friends and really just enjoy each other's company. You are welcome to come by and see what you think.

http://communities.msn.com/TheThymeandPlaceCafe/_homepage.msnw

The only problem with the chat rooms, information cant be shared with everyone. Forums allow every one to log in at their convienience and look at all the posts. Informative chat will be lost and unable to retrieve unless its posted on the forum.
Thats my opinion about chat rooms. Plus there is always gonna be a jerk log in and talk trash and dusrupt the session. Someone like you say doesnt care about gardening, just wants to BS about non topic things or pic up chicks online. NO thanks, I will stick to the forum anyday.

Bobby

Thanks for your responses. As far as pertinent information being exchanged only on chat and not having it related to broader spectrum in Forums.... I'm not looking for mass exchange of info...just general garden talk. Not just "garden tech", but personal impact gardening has had on people's lives, anecdotes, even mundane little things like: "what happened in my garden today...", etc;
I know there'll always be spamming idiots. They're like aphids: "if you plant it (like a new chat room), they will come!" Just have to hose them down periodically...(the aphids and the idiots)!!! LOL.
And, primrosie, only wish I could get MSN CHAT, but browser doesn't support. Get their forums, but can't chat. Feather, you're right, OG should (in addition to all its other new changes) install a chat room. Pass it on! Still looking for any other rooms, if you hear!

If you want to pay for the privledge, Davesgarden.com has a good garden chat room (or did, I left the site when they started charging for it). Folks chatted about all things in the garden from how-tos to what they were doing that day to anecdotes. It used to be open on Thursday evenings for about 3 hours. there were no chat aphids in that room, it was nice. frankly it has been the only chat room I have enjoyed because it did stay on topic.

All the yahoogroups have a chat function. I have a organic growing list there. OGII@yahoogroups.com to subscribe either go to the website or send a blank email to subscribe-OGII@yahoogroups.com

I used to have a yahoo groups site too. i liked it but every now and then it wouldnt allow me in and I was the founder. I had to create a whole new identity and use that one for chat. When following their protocol in reporting problems I learned that many other people were having that problem as well. It never got better so we moved.

I do like the MSN communities. They are similar to yahoo but you get a lot more space and room to be creative. I use the yahoo pager and so do the others in our community. When we see that there's a member online we IM and then go to MSN chat. But you can create a private chat room and send invitations right from the yahoo pager too. Another advantage to the groups or communities is that for someone to participate, they have to join. if you find they are trouble you can remove them. we've never had that problem though.