How do you know how to garden?

A lot of people ask me questions start with "how do you know how..." Especially after we started our vegetable garden, more and more people start to ask me how and where I learn to garden and grow stuffs. The truth is, this is the first house I ever live in with a garden that I can do anything with. I grow up in aparement building. The only thing I ever grew in my life are those house plants I could plant in the flower pots. I didn't start gardening until three years ago when we got the house. I never started serious about growing things until we own our house.
So how did I learn?
Well, when we first get here in Champaign, we found the community garden near Orchar Down. We started by going there to see what kind of vegetables people grow. When we went visit, we not only check on what they planted, we also pay attaintion on when they plant it, how they take care of the plants, whether the plants are doing well.
Then we start growing our own vegetable. A lot of them. We tried to grow everything we are interested in eating. Sometimes even things we never have before, like Swiss Chard. When you plant several things at once, even some of them fail, you don't feel so bad. You still get some other things to eat.
One of our first visit to Pontious farm, the U-pick blueberry farm, I found that they got one of the Asian herb, shi-so. I asked the owner of the farm where she got the seeds from, she introduced me to Johnny's seed catalog. This is the most useful catalog I have ever seen. Inside the catalog, you can find all the information you would ever need for germinating the seed, picking a good spot to plant, what kind of problem to expect, to when and how to pick the vegetable. Now when I have a question about some specific plant, normally I would check the catalog first, before I try the internet.
Another important thing about planting is to pay attention to how the plants are doing. You can see if the leaves are drying out, if there are some bugs on the vegetables, or the same kind of plants do better at one side of the garden than the other side. By paying attention, you can learn a lot about what the plants need, what they prefer. Sometimes trail and err is the best way to learn. Especially the possible lose is only a few seeds. So if you are not sure what's the best spot for a particular plant, put one each at different location, soon you will figure out what they like and dislike.
If you don't have much time to take care of the plants, can you garden? Of course you still can. There are a lot of plants that only require minimum cares. I recommend people start by growing herb. Most herbs are weeds at some point in the past. That means they would do quite well without much tending. Just make sure when you first plant it, give it regular water everyday for about two weeks. After the plants get established, they don't need watering unless it is extreme drought. Just make sure you put them in a sunny spot. Most herbs are sun lovers. Plants in the pot generally need more watering than the plants in the ground. So if you can put them in the ground, do so. That would make life easier.
Have I get you interested? If you are up for trying, here is a list of things that are easy to grow.

Herbs from seed: basil, cilantro(seeds are called coriander), dill, fennel,(both dill and fennel produce lots of seeds. Once they are growing in the garden, you can't get rid of them.), sweet marjoram
Herbs from cutting or transplant: thyme, oregano, wild marjoram, chive

Root vegetables: beets, radishes, potato(if you get some potato germinate before you can finish it, dig a big whole in the garden and plant them)
Leave vegetable: lettuce, Swiss chard, oriental amaranth
Other vegetable: tomato, pole beans, pea