When I was young and first married I lived next door to an elderly lady who in my mind must have been a master gardener. She taught me a lot. Here is some of her instructions.
When you set out your tomato plants don't just stick them in the ground, put them to bed. By that she meant dig a trench and lay them on their sides, covering up with dirt to their top set of leaves, she said that way they put out more root growth and bore more tomatoes.
If you want to fertilize the garden use manure tea. She would get a pile of it from our zoo or somebody's farm, about a large box full. Put a shovel full in an old white bucket and add water, let it steep for a day or so and then water at the ground level each plant you have set out. She would do this everyday, her plants were huge.
When you chop weeds, chop them off at the surface and don't dig much into the dirt, when you do you expose other weed seeds to light and they will germinate. Don't put weeds in your compost pile either.
She had a compost pile in the shade and she would put her garden waste and kitchen waste into it and she kept it covered with and old screen. She turned it about once a week and watered it if it had not rained. From her kitchen she added all the vegie waste and egg shells to.
She would sweeten her soil in the spring and fall with powdered lyme.
She put black pepper on her roses to keep the bugs off.
Birds and cutworms are bad about getting new pepper plants you set out. She would put collars around them she made from paper cups when she first set them out and it worked great.
She saved all her plastic gallon sized milk jugs and just cut the bottom out. If she had set plants out early and the weather got too cold she would set a jug over them and kind of wedge it down into the dirt a bit and it would make a mini green house. She never used the screw lids.
If I remember more later I will add it. Hope this helps. I know that when you use new ground to make a garden it will be a good one.