How does your garden grow?

This gardening stuff is SO new to me, but I must say that I'm enjoying the idea of growing our own veggies in our backyard.  We spent Mother's Day weekend tilling up our garden spot and planting all kinds of stuff: 2 types of lettuce, spinach, bok choy, snap peas, cilantro, basil, sage, tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, 2 types of bell peppers, carrots and onion.  Adam worked his butt of tilling it up with just a shovel, and I'm upset I didn't pull out the camera to show all his hard work.

This is the mess that we started with a couple years when we purchased the house.  We cleaned it up immediately, but never got around to planting anything.  (It's right up against our garage, fyi)

And this was right after planting, just a few weeks ago:

And here's a picture of the plot today:

I definitely don't have a green thumb, so any advice you have on keeping a garden would be much appreciated.  We've already learned that we planted the peppers and tomatoes too early- but everyone else at the store was buying them so I thought we'd be ok!  :)  Guess you can't go by that.

And I just learned during this post that we need to cover up that terrible paint job from the previous owner by planting some vines up the side of the garage.  Do home projects ever end?

The next big outdoor project is the our backyard revamp!  Can't wait to have it all cleaned up.