I won’t claim to be a master gardener. Heck, I’m probably not even a qualified guide in the traditional sense. I don’t have a botany degree nor a degree in agriculture from some land grant college on the Great Plains. (I did participate in 4-H for about a year when I was eight.) I don’t even know the complete taxonomy for some of the plants I grow.

I do have a genuine love for dirt and a traditional family avocation extending back before my own birth of using the produce from gardens and orchards in everyday meals. Some of my earliest memories are of running through the garden fetching ripe tomatoes and delivering them to Grandma in her voluminous, flowered muumuu (she wore the muumuu not me) or listening to Grandpa lecture about the proper care of rose bushes and apple trees. And during adolescence spending endless, sweltering days in late Summer picking, snapping and canning green beans with Mom or listening to my Uncle Stan’s latest salsa recipe.

For the last decade or so I’ve been practicing the avocation on my own little plot in suburbia, developing my own modified version of Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening, slowly expanding my working space. And most recently, getting into heirloom seeds and seed saving.

While I’m going to present some basics this week a lot of gardening requires participation on your part and I want to go over a few important but uncategorized points lest I forget or gloss over them:

• If you are a beginner, start out small. I plan on running 12 tomato plants this year, I started with one in a 15 gallon pot on an apartment patio. Remember, you are doing this for pleasure.

• Learn the taxonomy for the plant(s) you grow. (Yes, I know, but these aren’t hard and fast rules.) Find a copy of Hortus Third at the library and look it up. Or if you like thick, expensive books weighing down your bookshelf buy it. (And if you want to be frivolous pick one up for me, too.) Or, because this is the modern age, google it.

• Get your hands dirty. Don’t wear gloves. Unless you’re gardening on top of a superfund site (in which case you’ve made a bad choice concerning your garden site) don’t worry about icky things. You’re probably getting a good dose of perchlorate in your drinking water anyway. (And if you’re still afraid of your soil contact your county extension agent and see what it’ll take to get your soil tested.)

• Talk to and touch your plants. Not because it makes them feel better or because it will complete a Wiccan Mother Nature orgy spell. Talk to your plants because when you talk to them you look at them and tend to notice problems before they become problems.

• Check into becoming certified in your state as a Master Gardener. No bullshit. It is usually rather inexpensive (or free) and you stand to learn tons of localized information.