My husband and I have played around with gardening for probably as long as we have been married. And we are still novices, I think, I tend to sway towards things that are not the norm for everyone else, and have never really used chemicals I think 7 dust is the most we have ever used and that we haven't since before we moved here.
I prefer heirloom seeds since we like to save seeds from what we grow and I love the taste much much better.
I also like to do things as easy as possible, call it lazy maybe, but dragging out a tiller and tilling the garden every year is a pain. Besides up keep on the dang thing, the noise of it all day is stressful. So we use a deep mulch gardening and haven't tilled our garden in 3 years. Our tillers have gone on to new homes and we are happier. We use leaves or hay which we prefer. We will buy hay that is old and moldy since we can get it free or really cheap. We will use big round bales since they roll out easier and leave a thick layer of hay. Weeds aren't as bad and when we get them they are easier to pull up, except this certain kind of grass which I just run over the the mower and compost back into the garden. But it doesn't pop up till August and by then the garden the spent anyway.
This is a link to posts starting from Jan 2012 for this topic.
We are very laid back in our gardening and enjoy the fruits of our labors, we share with our livestock, and neighbors. We also pick from a upick to can up large amounts of our yearly food supply of tomato products.