Okay it's spring, lets grow a garden!

At the urging of my eldest daughter I am going to start giving garden tips in my column. Not that I am a professional in this field, but I do spend a whole lot of time figuring out the misdirection that exists in the wonderful world of gardening.
Last year I had great success for the most part, some failures as well but what I learned will drive me this year to grow as much food as possible in my suburban back yard. What is wonderful about this today is the raft of help that is available on the internet. I sit in front of my iPad and can find info on just about anything related to growing food. So the first and most important tool you need is an iPad.
It is my belief that raised bed gardens are the very best way to go. You have better control of the soil you use, the beds warm up faster, you can cover them easily in the event of some bad weather and the most important thing is that you do not walk on them compacting the soil. This and this alone is good enough reason to "raise your beds". Do a quick Google of raised beds and you will see hundreds and hundreds of different ideas, many of which are easy and cheap to build. Not only that but by raising the beds bending over is much easier and keeping the weeds out as well.
So start there and then we will go into more info on the hows. When you think about it, we could grow so much food right where we live that famine could be wiped out. But most of all growing food is so much fun and rewarding that it makes you wonder why we don't do more of it.