Hi JG and welcome to the Vine. You'll get loads of advice and have a good laugh here too.
Now is an ideal time to mark out thearea you wanna use for your veg plot and dig it over. You say you are thinking about using raised beds too. Thre are those who swear by them and those who just use their ground as it is. Although you say your garden slopes down to the area you plan to use, unless water run-off is a problem at the moment, or that part of your garden already has drainage problems, there is no necessaity for raised beds. However, they may look tidier, make it easier to plan cropping and means you should never have to walk on your soil. If you opt for raidsed beds, make them no more than 4 ft wide. This ensures that you can reach the centre of the bed without having to stand on it. I know it doesn't sound very wide but remember you may have to reach crops in the centre by going over the tops of crops at the edges ofthe bed. In addition, raised beds warm up quicker and drain faster too.
No matter what system you opt for, dig over your area, apply compost / manure as necessary - remembering that some crops don't grow to their best in freshly manured ground.
Enough for just now - sure others will be along to pass on their shared wisdoms too. Let us know what you decide, what sort of area you have and what you wanna grow and we'll do our best to tailor the advice for you.
Good luck

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Rat

British by birth
Scottish by the Grace of God

Blog updated Wednesday November 13th