>>1969676Google is definitely your friend here, there's a lot of excellent advice out there for people just getting into gardening. There's also a lot of old wive's tales that aren't necessarily bad advice but won't really help you either. The links in the pastebin are full of great information, I'd recommend looking through some of them while ignoring the more advanced/weird things like humanure and aquaponics.
For soil, a good test of quality is to grab a handful of it and squeeze; if it forms a tight lump it's clay and will retain water, which means you have to water less but your plants might get root rot if it rains too much; if it doesn't clump it's sand and will need extra watering. Some plants like clay and some like sand, but most plants are happiest somewhere in the middle. Generally you can just build a raised bed and fill it with garden soil and not worry about it, but if you want to improve your soil you can look up ways to amend it.
