Starting a garden

It was warm today, up around 76F here. Back in San Diego we had a large garden that changed periodically. One year we were up to over three hundred rose bushes. After working through that, we moved to a more tropical courtyard and were down to twenty roses. I went crazy over a seed catalog, can put in twenty different types of tomatoes one year - yellow ones, green ones, white ones (yes, white tomatoes), striped ones, purple ones, and even a few red ones.
Moving to Las Vegas, with the heat and colder winter nights and strange soil is leading us into different plants here. We pulled up most of the grass and put in a low water landscape, but with over twenty new trees (more on that in the future). I still want a vegetable garden, and have been researching how best to do it. One of the growers in the area is a Master Gardener called the Tomato lady. She has lots of tips on hot weather tomato growing.

I started by putting in three raised beds each 4x8 feet. These were filled with a mixture of planting soil (mostly sand) and bunches of bags of ammendments - peat moss, manure, compost, etc. Topped with a soaker hose to supply the water.
Tomorrow the Tomato Lady is giving a talk at a local nursery. I already have her book and have started some seeds inside, but am looking forward to hearing what she has to say.