You can plant directly in the ground, and mulch around the plants to keep the weeds back and the moisture in, and water the garden when you haven't had much rain.
If you can get some properly composted (aged) manure to till into the soil, all the better. Before you do, you might want to get your soil tested. You can usually do that through your county cooperative extension service, or you can send it away to a lab that does garden soil testing. The results of the test will tell you your soil's pH, as well as the level of key nutrients in the soil. You'll find this useful later when you run into the inevitable problem - most likely a plant that isn't thriving or looks like it's struggling. At that point, people can speculate and suggest that you add this or that to the soil, but if you don't know what the soil already has and doesn't have, it's mostly just speculation. (I learned that because I came here asking questions like that and hadn't had the soil tested, by the way. I made lots of mistakes but learned from every one of them.)
You'll find that most plants are amazingly resilient and can survive all sorts of abuse. Lots of people stick their plants in the ground and don't do a lot of research and do just fine. But if you've been bitten by the gardening bug as bad as most of us around here have, you'll probably want to buy the membership and click around. I knew very very little about gardening when I found this site. I clicked around a lot and read a lot and was amazed at the information here. And the folks who jump right in and answer your questions when you can't find what you're looking for.
By the way, the search here isn't working right now. But you can google Dave's garden x, where x is the search term, and find what you're looking for.
As far as books, I purchased The Gardener's A-Z Guide to Growing Organically. It is organized by vegetable (and herb and fruit), with recommendations for growing each, simple formulas (based on your last frost date) for calculating when you should plant them, temperatures for germination and growth, watering requirements, etc. Many seed catalogs can also be a great source of growing information.
I've read a few other gardening books here and there - I'm nuts about books . . . my job is to help create books - but as far as gardening goes, your best source of information is truly Dave's Garden.
(You've already passed your last frost date for your area, right? You might already know that all the stuff you're planting isn't tolerant to frost. But if you aren't sure, you can look up your frost date here: http://davesgarden.com/guides/freeze-frost-dates/ )
Good luck, and happy gardening! That looks like a nice-sized, sunny spot you've got there, and within a few months it will be bursting with green!
