Winter is the time of year I start thinking about my flower and vegetable gardens. It may seem a little strange to some people, because nothing usually grows much in the winter time, but this does tend to be the best time of year to start your compost pile.

Now I don’t create “official” compost piles and I don’t have any kind of composting bin either. Instead, I mix a variety of natural materials together in one of my garden beds, and let those decompose on their own. My two favorite things to use are coffee grounds and fireplace ashes.

Coffee grounds make wonderful food for almost any kind of plant or flower. I sometimes spread them around the base of my indoor container plants, and sometimes I mix them into my soil when planting something new.

In the winter time though, I tend to have a lot of fireplace ashes. Since I’ve got a fire going regularly in my fireplace, it needs to be cleaned out every week or so. When it’s time to clean out the ashes from my fireplace, I simply scoop them into a bucket. Then I take that bucket to a garden bed that’s right outside my office door, and I dump them in the corner.

I have coffee every day too, but I don’t always remember to dump my used coffee grounds, so this is done randomly and occasionally. The same simple proceedure applies though: Just empty the coffee grounds into a bucket, and take them outside. I dump them into the same corner as the fireplace ashes. Then once in awhile I may stir, mix or spread the pile if it gets a little big.

If you drink tea instead of coffee, tea grounds work just as well. In fact, you can toss the entire tea bag into your compost pile, but it will take longer to decompose that way.

These everyday household items are all I tend to use for enriching my garden bed soil. In the spring when I start preparing the beds for planting, I simply mix the ashes and coffee grounds into the soil itself. I then scoop out some into buckets and spread it around to other beds around my yard, and mix it into the soil in each of those too.

Creating compost or enriching your soil in this casual manner does take a bit longer, but it works wonderfully over time. If you’d like to speed up the process you can of course create a full fledged dedicated compost pile in your backyard, or buy a commercial compost bin. Some of them turn your scraps into rich compost within just a month or two.

Other every day items that you can add to your pile include:

Newspaper scraps – They’ll decompose faster if you shred them first.

Fruit and Vegetable scraps – These also will decompose faster if you chop or shred them first. Be aware though: Adding these to your pile can be a bit “smelly”.

Related Reading: “Smelly Composting: Dealing With Compost Bin Odors”

The 2009 gardening season taught us a lot of helpful things we will apply in our 2010 garden for a better garden. We thought it would be helpful to you, the new gardener, while helping ourselves to remember for next year.

Jenny and I are really enjoying gardening in our backyard garden. Just a few short years ago we would never have called ourselves gardeners but it tends to grow on you over time.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we are seasoned gardeners, not by any stretch of the imagination but we have learned a lot of helpful gardening tips from gardening friends.

We have also learned a considerable amount from online searches using my favorite search engine, Google, and we especially love Youtube for great gardening videos. I learn so much faster watching videos than I do reading.

So here are our top 5 gardening tips for newbies:

Gardening Tip #1 : Keep A Gardening Journal

Tracking what works for you and what others teach you is vital to having gardening success sooner. That is where a gardening journal will come in very handy.

Being able to look back to previous years to see what worked and didn’t work is invaluable. It took me three years before I realized I should have started a gardening journal.

For us, not having a gardening journal, wasn’t so bad because I blogged about everything we did, so I do have a record of it by date.

Use you journal to track the time you plant seeds, how you prepared the ground before planting. The same for plants you purchase that you aren’t growing from seed. You need to remember what you did that was successful or not so successful.

So start a gardening journal TODAY.

Gardening Tip #2 : Read The Labels

I’m a guy and known for throwing about the instructions without reading them. Well I am in my mid 50s now and starting to learn that it’s better to read the labels. I just don’t tell anyone.

Seriously, reading the lable and either keeping it or writing it up in your journal will save you time, money and cut down on your stress in the garden.

If a label says full sun and you ignore it and plant it in the shade you maybe scratching your head a month down the road wondering why it’s not doing so well. Is it the watering, what could it be?

Maybe that’s why we didn’t get any zuchinni this year. Hmmmm, better write that down.

So be sure to read the label and planting instructions.

Gardening Tip #3 : Support Your Garden Plants

I made a bit of gardening mess on our first year. I staked up beans, peas, tomatoes, well just about everything but did a poor job and most things kind of out grew the stakes and slowly fell into the rest of the garden.

Next year we are using at least 1 inch stakes instead of the little bamboo stakes I bought. They might work for our indoor plants but outside in the wind and weather they didn’t hold up very well.

So support your garden so it grows up healthy and strong, literally.

Gardening Tip #4 : Get The Right Garden Tools

Tools will either help or hinder your progress.

Example: We didn’t bother with a wheel barrel for the first couple of years, until I realized I was not doing as much as I could because of my energy level. I was wasting most of the little energy I have by hauling things back and forth to and from the garden shed.

A wheel barrel is a great investment.

Another indispensible tool would be my garden gloves. Yeah you read it correctly. An item that costs about 2 bucks saved my tender little hands so that I could continue to work longer.

As a blogger and web designer I don’t do much more than type using my hands so they aren’t very tough. Plus it’s a lot nicer to use gloves while digging in the dirt. I may have to stop and work on a client’s site, like I did this morning.

I don’t have to waste precious time cleaning my hands so I can use my keyboard. Once I was done I was right back out in the garden, wearing my gloves.

Gardening Tip #5 : Share What You Grow

We grew tomatoes this year, again, but more. We ended up with so many tomatoes that I was able to stew some for some of my great garden recipes and enough to share with friends and family.

We don’t grow everything but other friends grow things we don’t so when we share with them it’s more of a barter I think as they give us from what they grow that we don’t and we do the same.

By the way our garden went so well this year that we are tripling the size for next year so we can grow more and maybe even start canning some things to enjoy through the winter. That brings back memories of growing up on the farm.

When it comes to planting a lawn the period of its initial growth is most important. If your lawn struggles to grow or germinate you might end up having to do the whole job again. There are certain conditions that lawn will grow quickly in as well as certain times of the year that are considered to be the best.

You will be able to find ideas on when to plant grass seeds under the these topics as well: grass seed onlinebuy grass seed online canada grass seed reviews grass seed reviews

In some instances you find that you do buy the correct type of seed for your area and have even cleared the ground very well. Yet if you decide to plant yor grass out of season then it will need more care and maintenance.

When planting grass seed you need to know that they require a constant supply of water for them to effectively grow. So during summer because of the high temperatures involved; planting during this time might not be a good idea. Planting in summer also risks the growth of weeds at the same time as your grass. If you are going to be planting in summer then spread some peat moss over the area to prevent the seed from drying out.

The best times to think of planting your seed is during spring or early fall. During this time of the year the temperatures are not so high and the grass does not need too much watering. It is not a good idea to apply weed killer when the grass is still small. Weed killer should only be used once the grass has fully grown. To make sure that the grass is healthy you can apply fertilser to it.

The time of the year doesn’t affect those places that have long periods of sunshine for most part of the year. In those places where the conditions are frequently changing find out the type of grass that will grow well in your area.

We have been blessed with so many tomatoes this year that we had more than we could use at one time and we can only give away so many. That is when I decided I would try stewing my own tomatoes for some soup and other dishes I prepare using tomatoes.

Tomatoes are probably the veggie we consume the most of. I am sure I use at least a can of tomatoes a day between lunches and dinners.

Stewing Tomatoes

I cut my tomatoes into equal sizes and then put them in a pot with a bit of water to get them started and set it to boil. They don’t take long and are so tasty. But…

… I have a hard time with tomatoe peels in my stewed tomatoes. I just never seem to be able to chew them up and swallow them like I can do with a raw tomato.

Peeling My Tomatoes

That is when I decided to peel my tomatoes before I stew them today.

I plunged them into boiling water for about 15 seconds. I did the first couple at about 25 seconds and it just became to mushy to peel.

At 15 seconds the pulp just under the skin was just soft enough to easily peel it with just my fingers. The cross or X I carved in the end of each tomato made the peeling a piece of cake.

So you know that you want to get into gardening, but where do you start? For the beginner gardener planting fall flower garden is very simple but also very enjoyable. Now if you want to go ahead and plant a fall flower garden in your yard, there are a few steps that you are going to have to take.

Fall Flower Garden: Plant in Spring

Although it is called a fall flower garden, remember that you are going to have to plant it in spring. The point here is that it is a fall flower garden because the plants will bloom in the fall. This makes for lovely landscaping around the yard, and you just have to choose the right plants so that they will bloom at the right time.

You want to find late blooming varieties of traditional spring and summer blooming flowers such as tulips, which are all going to work great in a fall garden. You can look up information and make sure that you spend some time researching whenever you are going to do anything with your garden, so that you know what you are doing and know that you are going to have the best results.

Adding a few climbers into the garden will be a great idea, because these will turn scarlet and red and will create a beautiful color pattern in the fall season around your home.

You are also going to want to plant a border around the garden. Not only is this going to be good for aesthetic appeal, but as well the border is going to help keep your plants contained. You don’t want your garden plants to start spreading around to different areas of your yard, so a border is going to be very helpful here.

As long as you are researched and know what you are doing, and of course choose the right plants, then you are going to have great success with your fall flower garden and not only that but can enjoy yourself while you are doing it. That is one thing about gardening, and that is that although there may be a lot of things that you have to learn, at the same time you always want to keep it fun.

Gardening is a great hobby, because not only are you going to have fun and get more relaxed, but it is a great way to showcase your home and add to its appeal.