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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.

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