If you are interested in organic and traditional gardening/living, I recommend you learn about Jim Kovaleski.  I learned about him maybe a year or so ago, and he is just amazing.  He has caught the eye of gardening bloggers, and they have made some videos of him doing his thing.  He is pretty much a male Ruth Stout 2.0.  Ruth Stout seemingly introduced covering your vegetable plots with lots and lots of dead grass to aid in growth.  Jim has taken it to a new level, living in a tent, gardening without watering, and has also popularized and made great use of the scythe.  And, he is just full of amazing insight.  

Ladislaus -  browns and greens.  And ideal compost pile has a balanced mixture of green freshly cut plant life and deadened brown plant life.  

Ladislaus - summer?   1st myth about composting.  It does not have to be warm weather to compost.  Some gardeners in colder regions use compost piles to heat their greenhouse garden plots.  Compost generates its own heat.  The more ideal the mixture and the amount of attention given to turning to optimize moisture balance, the hotter it will get. 

And, as for being good or bad at gardening, forget about that.  Learn the fundamentals, and just give it attention.  You will probably develop your own way of doing things, and that will be good enough to begin things.  

And, I would much rather have deer roaming my land than bottles of urine sitting around.  So, try the fence route.

Ladislaus - summer?   1st myth about composting.  It does not have to be warm weather to compost.

Well, it's about 10 degrees F here right now, so that's what I mean by summer: not this.  There's some stuff you can plant when the ground is cooler, but for most you have to wait a little while.  I know you can compost, but I was talking about planting.