I can tell you how I do it and you can decide if it will work for you.

First, a good fall tilling. I then plant a winter tolerant green manure crop if you are interested in that. Then when I have a couple of unusual warm and dry days in late January or early February - those break in the weather days - I till in the area for the early crops and leave the rest. I cover it with a light layer of straw/hay mulch and when ready to plant I just rake the mulch off to one side.

The rest gets tilled at regular planting time. That way the rows or patch that will be used for lettuce, peas, cabbage, etc. is ready for planting. How well that will work depends on how you lay them out - a single intensive planted row or a wide row or how?

An alternative would be to use a couple of large containers like Earthboxes for your early spring crops.

As to planting times - JMO but it seems just a bit early for you to be planting right now in your location. My peas and lettuce just went in a week ago.

Hope this helps.

Dave

I looked up MU extentions guide, and, OK, I'm not late, seems like this week is the starting period. That's good...

Peas - Central Missouri March 15 to April 10
Onions - Central Missouri March 15 to April 15
Leaf Lettuce - Central Missouri March 15 to May 10 / Aug. 1 to 20
Romain - Central Missouri March 15 to April 20

I've not done green manure. Like the idea though.
I've got clay, and have been working on that myself adding compost, moss, etc. It's improved much, but I think still a bit high in clay content. I'm sure getting on top of the mix will help too.

I haven't been doing the fall tilling, but expect that may be enough in itself to get me going.

What I really wanted to understand is if entire gardens were being preped in the spring. It's just too wet to do that here.

I till my spring garden as late in fall as possible. My goal is to have the soil hard-freeze while it is still aerated from the tilling. If needed, I will tarp the garden to protect from fall rains to keep it dry for tilling. I amend the soil with compost and dry leaves. I do not work the soil in any way in spring prior to planting seeds. When it is time to plant seeds I lay down boards to walk on between the rows I have laid out to minimize soil compaction. The boards are removed as soon as the seeds are planted, not left in the garden.

Every spring is different. My planting time is based on the soil conditions, not on a planting date. None of the early spring varieties I plant go in deeper than one-half inch so my guide to plant seed is when the top one inch of soil is dry enough to be safely worked with the hoe. This means that the soil I am disturbing, which is the soil that needs to settle aroung the seeds and is the soil that the future seedlings have to sprout through, will remain loose and friable and will not dry out into clumps and clods.

Best wishes for success!
-Tom

Earth boxes are pricey.

Equally effective for you to deal with heavy wet soil is to mound up raised beds in the fall when the soil isn't too wet. Can't do that now, I guess, but for the price of 3 or 4 earth boxes you could get a truckload of compost or loam and make a raised bed 30 times the size of an earth box at least.

We inherited a bunch of those boxes, I would never pay money for them. They are too shallow to grow anything other than juvenile greens in.

I'm another one who relies on fall tilling. My garden area is clay and drains poorly, so tilling in the spring is often impossible. In the fall, I till in chopped leaves and add fertilizer to the soil. Then I rake up the raised rows where I'll plant early spring crops. In fact, I did it yesterday.

Sounds like tilling in the fall is the thing. I change my layout every year, experimenting with different things, looks like you guys have your plan for the next season in the fall so you know where to rake and mound for planting in the spring. See if I can remember to do that this fall for next year.

Thanks for the input.

You also may want to consider migrating to one of the no-till techniques for your garden -- but it does limit the amount of rearranging you can do. After you invest time in your beds (be they raised or mounded or whatever), you don't want to turn them into rows one year.