Local experts can be a great place to start your vegetable gardening odyssey. You may not get the one-on-one garden advice you need from a place like Home Depot, but local nursery store owners and master gardeners are great sources of gardening information. Be sure to visit the Farmer’s Almanac page to learn about your local growing season and when the last frost is expected to arrive. This can help you plan when you’ll begin your gardening season. If you’re beginning in late spring or summer, there are still a few quick-growing crops like lettuce and transplanted tomatoes that you may be able to salvage.

The first thing you’ll need to do when designing a vegetable garden is picking the most appropriate location and size. First, make certain your location gets a lot of sunshine. Most vegetables need approximately six to eight hours of direct light each day for the best outcome. If you have a shadier location, you can place your lettuce and spinach there. As you evaluate your property, make sure to take into consideration the shade cast by the deciduous trees and the house during particular times of the day.

Ideally, the garden will be handily situated in close proximity to the kitchen, so you can tend to it with less effort and harvest your crop without traveling long distances. The ideal soil will be filled with nutrients and drain well, so you might have to add fertilizer and get out your tools to ventilate the soil before you begin.

A gardening expert will usually tell you that raised beds are the best method for effective vegetable gardening. Garden guides love raised beds because they increase the growing area by reducing the amount of garden used for paths, they save fertilizer and compost materials, they are easy and convenient to work with, they work well with trellises, they are 12-15 degrees warmer than the ground so you can plant earlier, and they are beautiful to look at. To begin creating your raised beds, measure and stake down each garden bed and outline the beds with string. To raise the bed, loosen the soil with a shovel or fork and nestle your bed into the plot. Smooth the soil on the surface of the bed with the tines and back edge of a rake. Take your time when shaping the beds, for this step is very important. Each bed should rise eight inches above ground when all is said and done and the most productive raised beds are about three feet wide. You can line the beds with bricks, stones or wood, whichever you prefer.

There are several strategies when it comes to choosing which plants to use in your vegetable gardening endeavor. Some vegetables are grown from seeds in a method known as “direct-sow.” A few weeks before the last frost (check the Farmer’s Almanac to get this date), sow your beets, carrots, parsnips, peas, radishes, chard, turnips and salad greens. After the last frost, sow your beans, corn, squash and herbs like dill and cilantro. Next, you may want to use some transplants for broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, parsley, peppers and tomatoes. Your summer squash, lettuce and broccoli will grow equally well from seeds or transplants, so that choice is up to you. Growing plants like beets, chard, green beans, lettuce, parsley, peppers, tomatoes, radishes and summer squash is rather easy in most parts of the country, so you may want to include a lot of these crops to start.

The benefits of a vegetable garden can’t be beat. You’ll get to enjoy fresh picked produce and you’ll get some great exercise at the same time! From the organic vegetable garden to herb gardening, you’ll find the information you need at the Vegetable Garden Site.

• I thought I would take a moment and wish the best of the Christmas season to any and all that celebrate Christmas. And look it's snowing out #
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• @tweetspinner I realize keyword searches come from Twitter, but that feature really sucks. Is there a better way to find keyworded contacts? in reply to tweetspinner #
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• @Earthyman We planted our 1st ivy last summer, it's still tiny but more than doubled in size over the summer. Hope it survives winter here. in reply to Earthyman #
• Well our raised bed strawberries have a nice warm blanket of snow over them now. Can hardly wait for next year to see how many we get. Mmmm #
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• Wish bloggers would show entire posts instead of just a snippet and then have me click a link to read more. Plenty of other blogs to read. #
• @home_garden_gis all your links seem to lead to an empty page with a peel away ad. in reply to home_garden_gis #
• @scgardeningnews Many years ago I lived in Ontario and worked for a girlfriend's dad who had a Christmas tree farm. It was great fun. in reply to scgardeningnews #
• The Secret To Getting Lots Of Followers On Twitter http://bit.ly/6BiLk3 While Having FUN #
• It's -27C and we have 6 inches of snow now. I wonder if it's time to plant those snow peas?? #
• I've given quite a few hints for Christmas gifts. I want gardening magazines but usually people get me what they think I want, like socks. #
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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.