If you're going with the raised beds then "Lasagna Gardening" might be just the ticket for you. It's a method of continuously layering stuff onto your raised beds which results in keeping it nearly weedless, enriching the soil, enhancing plant growth, and REDUCING THE WORK, lol.

A good helpful book.

Also check out the forums at www.gardenweb.com for good gardening advice, they have over fifty gardening forums by topic, with many of them having their own photo galleries where folks post pictures of exactly what they're talking about.

Hint: Plant some food that's much hardier than your present growing zone requires. That way if you get a year of a bitterly cold winter your apple trees will survive it while your neighbors' probably won't. Note that during the last ice age the temperatures in florida were like those of present day Chicago...