Gardening is a huge topic for this place. First I'll say that as far as I remember, there's always been a garden around me to play with. It can be a chore or loads of fun depending on how you set it at first.
For a newbie, I've seen the perfect thing. In the latest Mother Earth News Wiser living series, there is a description of a
gardening technique that is the simplest I've ever seen. You take platic wrapped bags of top soil, lay them flat, cut off the top and plant right in them. Put some sort of soil cover and water and tadah! Job is done. There are numerous advantages to this. You don't have to ammend the soil, you can choose a mix prepared for the planting you do, the ground cover material such as straw prevents weeds to set up, the plastic saves on watering and the roots keep to the bag.(if you choose invading species)
My wife and I use, because we live on a tiny suburban lot, a variant of the square foot boxes. It's built on
hardware found a Lee Valley Tools.
I bought those corner brackets and the cheapest wooden boards I could find. Total cost 175$CAN. I like the system because at our...
seniority, it saves us from kneeling and bending so much.
From the pictures, two are from 2002, the last time I took pictures. The boxes were built the year before. The other one I took this morning. Two weeks ago I've had to rebuild the boxes at a cost of around 90$can, with the same stainless steel brackets and screws. The wood, as expected had started to rot down and failed. It took 6 hours to rebuild without moving the soil but it's worth it.