Choose A Sunny Location
There's no better way to start than by choosing a sunny spot for your garden. Most vegetables need six to eight hours of direct sun a day. Leafy greens can thrive with a bit less. The ideal garden location has loose soil that drains well. If your soil isn't perfect, you can improve it over time by adding organic matter such as compost.

Make the Garden the Right Size
Plot your garden on graph paper, with a grid of 1/4 inch squares. Each square represents one foot in the garden.

Create Your Garden
Once you have a plan, you're ready to stake the garden. You'll need a tape measure, plenty of string, 12 to 18-inch stakes and a hammer. For best sun exposure, orient the garden so the rows run east to west, with the tallest plants on the north end. Following your plan, drive a stake in each of the four corners of the garden. At this point, you'll need to rototill or turn the garden by hand and remove existing weeds. Next, test the pH of your soil. Most vegetables require a pH between 6.0 and 6.8. Next, measure and stake each garden bed and outline the beds with string. To raise a bed, first loosen the soil in the bed and then shovel soil from an adjacent path onto the bed. Keep adding soil until the bed lies evenly between the string boundaries. The object is to end up with a flat-topped raised bed that extends fully to the string boundaries.

Feed the Soil
As you build each bed, broadcast several inches of compost or natural fertilizers over the surface and work into the soil with a rake.

Decide What To Grow and When
Many vegetables are best started from seeds sown directly in the ground; others go in as seedlings. As you plant, remember which plants are frost-tolerant and which are not.

Direct-Sow
After the last spring frost, the following vegetables grow particularly fast from seed: beets, carrots, parsnips, peas, radishes, salad greens, beans, corn and squash.

Transplants
Eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and cole crops (such as broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower) grow best from transplants.

Time It Right
The average date of frost in the spring is the key date to use in garden planning. You can safely plant the 'cool-season veggies' (broccoli, sprouts, cabbage, celery, peas, radishes and spinach) before the last frost date. Plant 'warm-season veggies' (green beans, corn, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, peppers, summer squash and tomatoes) only after the threat of frost has passed.

Note from the Weston's Feed and Seed web guy:
The date for the last frost for Greensboro NC is April 22nd
Source: "Climatography of the U.S. No. 20, Supplement No. 1",  1988,  National Climatic Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.
Original source found here

Why Raised Beds?
• Increase the growing area
• Better define planting and growing areas
• Saves fertilizer, compost and water
• Reduces work 
• Help plants grow better 
• Are convenient and makes reaching the plants easier