Hi, I have a degree in biotechnology. Gene splicing in plants is not usually done, beginners use bacteria. Bacteria readily uptake new chromosome plasmids. Plants do not do this.
To tell you how to get started, I would really know exactly what you plan to do. This is also VERY expensive to perform. Reagents for these experiments can cost upwards of a couple hundred dollars.
I would take plant tissue culture courses if you can. The course offered at your school most likely is a course that deals with bacterial DNA work. Plant physiology courses are also very important. THere are some textbooks on this type of work, however many of them are lacking imformation. Look up plant tissue culture. That should help you out. I think that you will only find journal articles on plant gene work that are very advanced.
I am interested on what you would like to do! I know that they just found the DNA sequence for snapdragon's yellow color. They are attempting to place this in the african violet's DNA to allow the violet to produce this color. Maybe do some searchs for this and find out how they have performed this experiment. There should be many journals in a college library and you should find this info in one of those journals.
-renee