Till and mulch would be my choice.

There will always be weeds no matter what. There are various means of minimizing them but, like the poor, the weeds (and the need to regularly weed the garden), will always be with us.

I would till in the spring. Then water it well, wait for the weed seeds to germinate and till again. Repeat.

Then mulch heavily around your plants and consider a good landscape fabric (like Lumite) in the paths.

Tilling up an area of turf once won't work at all. I've seen many folks try to start a garden this way. If you till once and then plant by July your weeds will be taller than your corn and by fall you'll be mowing the "garden" with the rest of the lawn once again. The best thing to do is to strip the sod first (1" deep) and let the exposed ground dry over several weeks, then turn to at least 10" (which most tillers won't do but any shovel will) and let dry again. You're killing all the weeds by letting their roots dry out. The new germinating weeds are not the problem, those can be controlled by mulch and cultivation, its the established turf that will grow right up through the mulch.

If this sounds like too much work (and you believe that chemical engineers are infallible and that chemical companies have your interests in mind and are trustworthy) you could also just spray the area with roundup and then turn under once the weeds are good and dead. This requires good heat and strong growth before spraying which might mean spring planting would be out of the question.

Well, you could also try solarizing with black plastic, but I think that takes several weeks, so you might not be able to use the area until it's pretty warm out. But that might work if you want to plant tomatoes or melons there.

Otherwise I would go the till and mulch and hoe route. But I would suggest putting in an extra effort to grub out any crab grass roots. You know, the ones with the long woody underground runners. Those can be a true painonce you ahve the area planted because they will often run right under your plants and then you end up disturbing the roots of your veggies when you try to pull the grass mid-summer!

Cheers!

If you cover the area with black plastic then you will effectively starve the weeds to death because they need light to make their food. It is effective and probably the quickest way of starting a vegetable garden.
You might get away with mulching if it is deep enough because this will have the same effect, however with the size of your weeds it might not be successful. I think that all gardeners know there is no easy method of starting a vegetable plot and hard work is needed to make it properly. So as sunibel7 says dig, mulch and hoe. I really hope you are successful

Here is a link that might be useful: New vegetable allotment garden

Thanks for all the replies!

If I go the black plastic route then as soon as the snow melts I should cover the area, which will be quite large, with the plastic and put heavy objects to keep it to the ground?

Also a mulch question:

I found a guy who will deliver as much wood chips for free as I need. He said it is aged about 9 mos. tbh, not sure what the aging has to do with it. Is this a good free source of mulch. Anything to worry about?

My neighbor uses his grass clipping (he doesnt use any chemicals in his lawn) and that seem to work good execpt for the fact it starts to compost and gets hot and slimy, but he doesnt have any weeds.

So which area should I be more concerned about, the heavily weeded area or the area that currently has grass (under the snow!).

TY

Wood chips are better for landscape plantings than in a vegetable garden because they take a long, long time to decay fully. From the voice of experience, they can be almost as bad as a load of gravel when you try to work the soil and plant seeds.

My personal opinion is the lawn grass is one of the garden's nastiest weeds. I've started a lot of gardens where gardens have never been before and it usually takes a couple years to get it reasonably free of grass. Then its a perpetual battle to defend the edges from the runners.

I started my garden 3 yrs ago on wild area of my yard. I don't own a tiller so I went the lasagna route. Once the veggies were planted, I mulched with newspaper and put either grass clippings or leftover wood mulch on top. That kept the lurking weed seeds from sprouting. (I did remove the "sod" to prepare the asparagus bed, but everything else was lasagna.)

Every spring I still have to battle the wild onions that seem to spontaneously generate and an occasional milkweed pushes through the paper (very strong and amazingly long roots). But, on the whole, pretty low maintenance.

Totems, you have a huge amount of work ahead of you! One option would be to divide your jumbo back garden into sections and separate with isles. You could bring,say, one of the sections on line this year with intensive lasagne/mulching techniques in addition to your new raised beds. For the unused sections this year, you could focus simply on weed eradication using Roundup, black plastic, etc. Then, next year you could add more sections. Misterbaby.

I would do a lasagna garden over it (no tilling or digging) and you can plant immediately. I had great results with this method last year. I did cardboard on the bottom (smothers weeds), alfalfa hay, compost, wheat straw, and a couple spoons of compost when planting. make sure to water as you layer. I had no weeds at all. The garden has sat all winter and still no weeds peeking through (although there are tons already growing in the lawn). I would highly recommend this method!