I recently cleared an acre in my yard, and I'm trying to start a nice garden.  I'd like to grow vegetables, and eventually get into chickens and plant some fruit trees.  I'm getting overwhelmed trying to figure it all out.  My first smaller garden kind of flopped, and I don't want to invest a ton of time and money to not get any yield.  I'm in south GA (8b zone)....I've gotten books from the library and perused youtube, but most tutorials are pretty vague.  Any suggestions for additional resources?

Start small, easy to plan big, then get overwhelmed, get busy and fall behind in weeding, etc.

Been at it half a century and still fall into that trap.

Couple raised beds to start easy to manage and good yield per effort.
I use big garden for potatoes, etc, low maintenance stuff

OP,,,,I owned a large manufacturing company fraught with technical issues, employee issues, cash flow issues, customer issues and more and more. Then I tried gardening. FUCK THAT,,,I'm retired. I don't need to spend hours and hours on something that produces the most expensive and smallest potatoes on the planet. I don't need to hurt myself hooking up the tiller to the tractor by myself to have onions that taste like dirt. I can, and have, put in a big assed dehydrator and which allows me to PURCHASE the best veggies grown in my AO and then store them which I really enjoy doing. NO gardner can be assured of "next years crop" but I can be assure that I can put up YEARS of food. Just my 2 cents.

Start with things that grow the easiest and will be little effort. Crops that will grow with groundcover are nice as it keeps the weeds down. I don't know your zone so I will stay out of that but I had an amazing berry garden when I lived in OR and it was very low maint I just picked the fruit and weeded once a year for about an hour.

Things that grow above ground and don't require annual replanting have done well for me.

Get your fruit and nut trees planted this fall.  It will take a couple of years for a return.  Get soil samples for that area
Lay out your garden area.  Again get soil samples.  If you have to lime the soil, and you will,  you want to do that this fall so it will be ready for spring planting.
Plant a dozen tomato plants, onions, peas, cucumbers the first year, see how it goes.  Maybe cantaloupe hill or two.  All of these are easy to grow, just add fertilizer and water and wait.
Second year branch out.  Add corn to your garden.  Plant it in a big square pattern on and end of your garden. Add more peas and stuff you can can to put up.  Maybe more tomato plants.

Just keep adding and see what variety's do the best.  It's not hard, just takes some time daily during planting growing and harvesting.  Add grass clippings, leaves to the soil will help in long run.  
Plant what you like to eat, what you can can or freeze for later.  Plant fall gardens, greens or collards etc.

Since you said you cleared an acre, I am going to make a couple of assumptions. How much sunlight does it get? Do surrounding trees shade it much of the day? A one acre clearing surrounded by trees will only get direct sunlight a few hour in the middle of the day. If so, your garden is not going to do well. What is the soil like? In south GA, I am assuming red sand or clay or a combination and pine trees? If so, your soil is very acidic and will need lots of lime to raise the pH to an acceptable range for most garden vegetables. These are the two major hurdles you will need to overcome first before having any chance at a good garden.

Try starting off small with a couple square foot gardens. Theres a book on it by Mel Batholomew. It makes a lot of sense and is a simple read.

I mainly want to feed my family, have a nice hobby, and have something to store for the future.  It is sandy soil, and I'm not trying to put the entire acre into cultivation, I just mean that the acre is available.  It has full fun throughout the day and I have access to power and water at the garden site.

Talk to some local gardeners about what they grow and what to stay away from.  Assuming that it is veggies that your family likes, there is a starting point.  Take some soil samples and take them to your local county extension office and get their suggestions on soil amendments.  If you were in MO, I would suggest 8 mater plants, 4 zucchini hills, 4 squash hills, 4 pepper plants and 3 rows of corn for your first year (again, assuming that your family eats that stuff).   A 30' x 40' area would be more than plenty for that.  If you like cucumbers and/or pickles, I would expand into them on year two.

As far as the comment on all the work involved in gardening, if you don't enjoy being outside (some times in the sweltering heat), getting dirt under your fingernails, smelling like tomatoes, etc., etc., don't do it.  It is work.  That said, I love it.  Planting the garden is some work (but to me is fun), but once it is in, you can fairly very easily keep up with a reasonably sized garden by spending an hour in it per night.  For me, the real work is when you let things go for a week, then have to play catch up.  I haven't been able to have a garden for three years, but for the ten years prior, I loved dragging the radio out to the garden, turning on a ball game and messing around in the garden for an hour or so in the evening.

Growing vegetables is super easy, defeating weeds, not so much.

I don't think there is much to learn.

You clear some land and dump a bunch of manure on it this time of year and till it under. If sandy soil like you said, put down loam, green sand, and dried blood and bone meal to get fertile soil.

Till it again early in the spring.

start seeds indoors if you want, but in GA doubt if you need to.

The plant plants and seeds at propper spacing.

Set up a way to water.

shit grows.

some is lost to disease, some to pests, you eat the rest.

I use the square foot gardening method with raised beds. I eat veggies all summer long. Still have cukes, tomatoes, and potatoes growing.

It doesn't seem hard

Beanstalk  method.
Throw seeds on ground, yell sink or swim.

These fellas are in GA and are a hoot to watch, they sell all kinds of seed, tools etc. and provide some good instruction for gardening in the south.

You need to have access to good rich nutrient soil to grow veggies and fruit trees successfully...

Setting up a fully functioning Irrigation system along with proper fertilizer is a must...

Liquid seven will be a great ally for you to fight off bugs and pests in the garden...

Elevated square veggie boxes work the best 2 ft above ground level....  12 ft x 6 ft box... build 6 of them...

Check local nursery listings for the best planting options for your zone 8 area...

Start off small and take your time working your way up thru the seasons building the 1 acre garden...

Peach tree / apple tree / kiwi fruit / orange tree / grapefruit tree / nut trees all can be grown in your area depending upon the season...

While it is difficult & most people will have a steep learning curve trying to relearn eons of forgotten knowledge...

Nothing is guaranteed. Not even food from the store. This year has proven that everything supplied by the globalist corporate supply chain can be turned off like a faucet at any time for any reason.

There’s no better time than the present to regain man’s forgotten knowledge in feeding himself. Start small & simple.


Potatoes & pole beans are two of the easiest plants to grow & yield a lot of food for the area. Find a good online education resource & a couple varieties that do well in your area.

I grew two varieties of potatoes this year - purple heirlooms in 5 - 25ga fabric pots & Yukon golds in mounds. I had good soil in my favor & that’s about it, I barely fertilized, only had about 5 hours of direct sunlight, planted late & harvested early.

The purple heirlooms yielded about 25lbs & the Yukons yielded about 15lbs. If I plant earlier, select a better location, fertilize for more root development (higher P & K) & harvest a little later I can probably double my yields.


YOU CAN DO IT!

People with no patience suck at gardening.   If you are one of those don't even try it, you'll just get a bunch of weeds and get tired of pulling them.

As others have mentioned, amending the soil for your area is a good idea & now is the best time to do that. Now is also the time to plant trees. Research fruit & nut tree planting for the best results.

There’s an old tree planting method I saw from a hundred + years ago. Dig a 3’ x 3’ hole, in the middle place a large flat stone or paver (this forces the roots outward), put the tree in the hole (add enough soil on the paver to bring the tree to ground level) fill with the hole half the soil you removed mixed with composted manure, composted wood mulch & garden compost/leaves. You can add various blood, cotton seed meals, etc. Water it in.

In addition to fruit & nut trees, planting perennials is a great low maintenance method for food production. Planting raspberries, blueberries, or whatever else that grows well in your location will provide fruit every year with only minimal pruning, mulching & fertilizer for maintenance, but often you can just let them grow.

Any perennial herbs like oregano, sage, wild varieties of some chives, onions & garlic can be planted for sustained harvests. Some wild varieties of annuals can also be planted like Queen Anne’s lace (wild carrot) that will naturally seed themselves each year. Research local wild edibles for things to collect seed from & plant on the edges of your garden area.

Inoculating for mushrooms local to your area is also a great way to provide healthy, tasty food year after year. It takes awhile before they really produce a large yield, but it’s well worth the wait.

@waterglass has a good write up in his burn bed thread.

I’m sure their are others I’m not thinking of right now.

Dandelions, lambs quarter, Purslane, basil, winter cress mustard, leeks, bunching onion, heading onion, poke stalk, Passion flower, dill, reseeding grapes like concord, hops, and lots of others are reseeding plants that once established will come back year after year and have good food value.