Too soon for tilling, here in Madison, Wisconsin. We still have a few piles of snow in the neighborhood. Daffodils and crocus are poking up, and I saw one green leaf in our raspberry patch today. If it were me, I would use the straw for weed control during the growing season, rather than tilling it in. Every spring, usually in May, I open up the compost pile, and dig out the finished compost. That's what gets tilled into the garden soil.

I would say too soon to till here in Indiana also, but that is mainly due to all the rain we have had. Ground is too wet. Also, we usually get a late snow that comes in march.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Pepper Guy's Blog

I am going to have plenty of grass clippings that I was planning on using for mulch during the season, but if you guys think that the straw would be better suited to that then i will save it.

Wet here in Ohio too. I'm just waiting for a few dry days so I can get it tilled.

I planted garlic as cloves in the fall, they sent up some green shoots which never died back. They stopped growing when winter got cold and just started growing again now it's gotten a bit warmer.

As for tilling, I would check your soil. If it's still wet and/or frozen in places, don't touch it. I know I don't dig my veggie beds till May, though I will move some perennials and such earlier if I need to.

MUCH too wet, but...I'm happy to hear you've got the gumption. :)

If you have clay soil...it's gonna be at least the middle of next month before you can till. (Barring no rain.) If you till while it's wet...you'll have the soil so compacted, it'll be almost worthless, for a long time.

You can use that straw for mulch in your garden to help keep the weeds at a minimum...that is if it's fairly weed seed free straw. Sometimes, there's a LOT of weed seeds in straw.

Just hold your horses & get your seeds started so you can transplant the PLANTS when the weather turns for the planting season. (That is if you're going to plant things that transplant well.) Beans don't really enjoy being transplanted, but most anything else out of that category does EXTREMELY well as transplants. I've even know people that transplant their sweet corn. Personally, I couldn't be bothered trying to transplant corn & wouldn't take the chance of breaking the root system, trying.

I, too, am in NW Ohio.

Aside from being too wet, I believe tilling is good to airate the soil,
let the sunshine do its part and bury all those tiny weeds seeds.
Before tilling, spread some leaves, compost, manure if available. The benefitial microbio in soil need some air too.
I turn over my patches few times after summer crops are finised
until I am ready to plant in the spring. Tilling in freezing climats can also help to get rid of cetain insects
and their eggs hidin in.

You should be putting that mulch back around (but not over) the garlic to protect the soil from drying and rain compacting. You might want to wait until the plants grow a bit to so that it is more difficult to "bury" them.

I'm outside Chicago, and it's wet here as well.

Something to consider: I've covered the area where I will plant my garden with black landscaping paper and black contract bags for now. I'm trying to use the sunlight to heat the ground a bit and dry things out.

I have a lot of work to do in order to get the garden ready for this year's planting, however any little help I can get along the way will help.

Ideally, I'd like to get out there in a week or so to at least work the soil. I need to add compost, peat, sand, etc to get things up to par.

We are anxiously waiting for the soggy ground to dry up. After the snow melted we had a couple days of rain. Haven't tilled this early before but we want to get some early plants going - potatoes and peas for one.
Anyone have any experience with potatoes that weren't finished the year before? I never dug them all up and I know there are some left in the plot. Any ideas?
We live in the Eastern Panhandle, WV