Are you intimidated by just the idea of starting a garden? It's not as tough as it sounds. Here are five simple gardening tips to get you started on a garden of your own. Have any gardening tips to add? Submit them below.

One step at a time: It’s easy to be overwhelmed once you decide to take on a project like gardening. What size garden should you have? Which plants should you start with? What kind of gardening tools do you need? Do you have to have a green thumb to even think of starting a garden? Start with a small garden and it’s less likely that you’ll get overwhelmed. Keep your first garden no bigger than 100 square feet. You’ll still be able to plant a lot, but you’ll also feel like the gardening is under control.

Control the water works: Watering more frequently for short periods of time won’t help your garden grow. In fact, it will make your roots grow closer to the top of the soil, which can be bad for your garden. Instead, try watering for long periods of time to really soak your garden and help the roots to grow deeper and penetrate more of the soil. To minimize fungus in your garden, be sure to water your garden early in the morning so the plants and soil can dry in the sunshine throughout the day.

Soil is key: Unless you have fertile soil in your garden, you won’t be able to grow anything at all. Gardeners must constantly pay attention to their soil, making sure the soil stays healthy and rich. But healthy soil doesn’t mean overworked soil, so be careful using tools like rototillers, which can make the soil powdery. Ideally the soil in your garden should contain particles of all different sizes and shapes. Try using a broadfork in your garden to loosen the soil but still maintain the soil’s structure and composition. Also, don’t work with the soil when it’s wet, because then the soil will clump together, proving difficult to work with in your garden.

Keep your feet on the ground: Avoid walking through your garden as much as possible. Foot traffic packs the soil together, and it’s difficult for the plants in your garden to grow in soil that’s been compacted. Gardening is an art form, and letting feet kick around your handiwork hinders both plant growth and garden aesthetic design. If you do have to walk through your garden, try laying a board on top of the soil for underneath your feet, since this will distribute your body weight evenly as you tread on top of your garden’s soil.

Wash your hands of it: Are you reluctant to garden because you don’t want dirt under your fingernails? One way to prevent dirty hands is to invest in a pair of gardening gloves, which you can wear every time you’re digging in the soil. Sometimes gardening gloves can be cumbersome, though, so another good tip is to scratch your fingernails over a bar of soap before you head out to the garden. Soap in your nails will prevent dirt from accumulating, and when you’re done in the garden, you can wash your nails or use a nailbrush to clear the soap, leaving your hands soil-free.