Traditional Garden

Here is my small traditional garden (6 feet x 8 feet) with a drip line. It eats up LOTS of water and needs shade in our summer. Never had a lot of success with it unless it rained alot (which is rare here). I always added better commercial compost and soil each year but always seemed to have bugs eat it. I decided last year to add aged compost from chicken, goat and steer manure plus some earthworm castings, gypsum and bone meal and covered it with straw and tree shavings mulch. WOW! I had a bonanza of veggies but also a HUGE water bill each month. Usually we get rain in July but the past couple of years it has been dry and real hot. I lost most of this garden when I left on vacation and the caretakers forgot to water it :(