Starting a vegetable garden from nothing in spring is less overwhelming broken into weekends than treated as one big project. Four weekends, done in the right order, gets a genuine first garden planted, and the order matters more than the individual tasks: prepare, then plant the forgiving crops, then plant the tender ones, then follow up.
Weekend one is entirely about the bed itself, not planting anything. Clear the site, remove weeds and grass roots rather than just the visible top growth, and work in compost or aged manure if the soil looks tired or compacted. This is also the weekend to decide on raised beds if drainage is a concern, since building them after the ground is already planted is a much bigger job. Resist the urge to plant anything yet: a bed prepared properly in week one outperforms one rushed into service on day one.
Weekend two is for the genuinely forgiving crops, the ones that tolerate a beginner's mistakes: lettuce, radish, spinach, silverbeet, beetroot, carrots, peas and dwarf beans. None of these are frost-tender, so they can go in as soon as the bed is ready, and a fortnight's head start here means something to eat within a month while the rest of the garden is still finding its feet.
Weekend two is for the genuinely forgiving crops, the ones that tolerate a beginner's mistakes: lettuce, radish, spinach, silverbeet, beetroot, carrots, peas and dwarf beans.
Weekend three, roughly a fortnight after the second, is when the frost-tender crops go in, tomatoes, capsicums, courgette and cucumber, timed to your own region's actual last frost rather than a fixed date. This is also the weekend to stake tomatoes while they're still small: a stake pushed in after the plant has grown risks damaging roots that have already spread.
Weekend four is a check-up rather than new planting: thin out any direct-sown rows that came up too thick, water deeply rather than little and often, and mulch anything that's establishing well to cut down on both weeding and watering for the rest of the season. A garden that gets this fourth weekend's attention tends to run considerably smoother through summer than one left to fend for itself after planting day.