Compost or aged manures would do a better job than the straw (and likely with fewer weeds as well). And you can skip the fertilizer.

Where are you located? And do you mulch to protect any exposed soil surface?

I am on the west coast of the Atlantic(Ireland).

I have used aged stable manures but not always with success.

I thought this was one method I had not tried and wondered if it might counteract the tendency for the soil to get compacted .

If it is not a no no then I will give it a try ,maybe on my broad beans first.

No I never protect the surface of the soil (over winter do you mean?)

During the growing season I don't feel it would be particularly beneficial.I do put seaweed over the raspberries but even there did not notice much benefit last year (maybe the effect will build up after a few years)

If you have it available, then give it a try. But here it is very hard to find seed-free straw so weeds are usually inevitable.

Bare soil exposed to the elements not only compacts over time but erodes and nutrients get leached out. Cover any exposed soil with a good layer of mulch to prevent this. Mulch also conserves soil moisture, moderates temperature swings and discourages weed development. And an organic mulch will add to soil fertility, aeration and improve drainage.

A winter alternative is to sow a winter cover crop, which then gets turned into the soil in spring before planting season. But leaving the soil bare is never a good idea at any time of year, heavy rains or not.

Hu many numbers. Have a Google of the work of Charles Dowding. A few years ago I stopped digging my allotment on heavy clay soil and started just covering it with compost and leaves once or twice a year. I also try never to walk on it. I wouldn’t recommend mulching with straw in snail country. Just compost, manure or leaves. And yes, always have the soil mulched over winter. Although not as wet as the West of Ireland I am in a pretty rainy climate

i don't dig too much either. What I do is to scrape up the weeds between beds and cart them away ,with as little soil as possible but unavoidably quite a lot to a big heap or two that I cover until the next spring.

I try to throw in seaweed on top too.

I cart it back again in the spring and makes new beds with it.

Sounds a great idea to me but it may just be my innate lack of ability doesn't bring the best out of the system.

Hopefully this year I will be more successful

I have found that after a few years of no dig I barely see any weeds because I’m not disturbing the soil surface and I’m keeping it covered. The few weeds I do get go to the compost heap and come back to the beds in due course. I don’t scrape them off because the idea is not to disturb the soil. I just pull the small number which grow. I do recommend reading Dowding’s work.

(The seaweed on the west cost of Ireland looks just exactly like Maine's rockweed.) I don't have much of a slug problem, so I use any fast degrading mulches I can find, and I try to cover them with a pretty upper mulch like compost or leaf mould if I can.. I've got a bale of something I found at the dump that I'm going to lay on the ground around my tomatoes. I will cover it with something attractive, something brown.

Since the traditional recipe for making bricks is to combine clay, sand and straw, I have my doubts as to whether mixing straw directly into the soil will have the effect you want.

Generally speaking, mixing straw or wood into the soil slows down the decomposition process because you are removing most of the air from the equation which fungus needs to live and break down the woody tissues. It will decompose (or compost) faster above ground. Then, once you have that compost, mix that in to the soil to break up clay, improve drainage, and help hold nutrients in the soil.

For this reason, your straw or wood chips or seaweed is put to better use as a mulch on top and then allowed to decompose naturally into the soil. Straw is a good base mulch, to which you can add things like grass clippings, coffee grounds, and other plant debris to speed along the composting process.

In gastropod country straw and grass clippings aren’t good mulches for vegetables. They make perfect habitat. They’re ok in ornamental beds providing you’re not growing something like hostas.