New to gardening - Complete novice needs help!

[RubyCakes]

Hi all! I know NOTHING about gardening, but I'm attempting to learn. I currently own a condo and I have a small patch of dirt to work with. There were lots of old and half dead plants in the dried up dirt so I tried removing them and in the process I noticed that the dirt has tons of rocks and tons of roots spread throughout. I have no idea what to do with the dirt. Do I go through it and pick out all the rocks? Do I pick out all the roots? Or do I just dump new soil on top? Any help would be greatly appreciated! TIA!

[rainbowgardener]

Depending on how small your small patch of dirt is, your easiest course might be to frame it up with something like railroad ties (or concrete blocks or bricks or whatever's handy) to make a raised bed and fill it in with good new enriched topsoil on top of what's there. The point of the frame is to hold your new topsoil in place