I've tried staking my peppers with wooden stakes, using the inexpensive wire tomato cages, and doing nothing ... and I've had the best luck using the wire tomato cages. Last year, doing nothing worked through most of the summer for me, but come early fall, when the vines were long and the fruit most plentiful, I had entire vines (with nearly ripe peppers) snap off in thunderstorms. So this year I'm going back to the wire cages, just to be safe. I hope you'll come back and post pictures of your tomato bed this summer. My experience with cherries is that they get gigantic and take over everything, so I'll be curious to see how yours do and how you end up pruning them. :)

This area gets morning time 5-6 hours of sun. I have no other areas in my garden where I get this much sun. That is why I am thinking of utilizing the sideyard. Wondering how to convert clay into nutrient rich soil for planting without the raised beds.

To follow up with the other comments - it sounds like you have a soil amendment on top of your actual soil. I would suggest dig down with a spade into the actual soil and turn that over and blend it in to the MG amendment. The combination of the two should be better than leaving them one on top of the other. Once they are blended, that is the mixture that you want to test. If you are not going to test, it is a rule of thumb that heavy feeding annuals like vegetables pull nutrients out of the soil that must be replaced in some way every year. If you are doing organic gardening, look for a complete organic fertilzer like Espoma Garden-tone or Dr Earth Tomato Vegetable fertilizer. Apply that in the early spring because the organic ingredients need to be broken down in the soil before the NPK is available to plants in May and June.

Bottom line is that you don’t have sufficient space for all those things. 28” isn’t wide enough for a double row of any of them. The lavender, for example, will not stay 12” wide. As someone else said, strawberries could take the entire bed. Also you’ve mixed annuals and perennials so you’d be disturbing the thyme, strawberries, lavender and lilies next year if you plant more annuals. Not that there will be room to fit them in! If rosemary won’t overwinter outdoors for you it might be better to grow it in pot so you can bring it inside in winter. And no, succulents don’t be happy with the amount of water needed by the basil and tomatoes. And, on the subject of water, forget the schedule. Water when required, not by the calendar. And what is the note about keeping the tomatoes and strawberries apart? They have different cultural requirements it’s true. But if you’ve read something about ‘companion planting’ I wouldn’t give it much credence.