Do you still have the tiller to take more passes?

No need to remove the sod generally. Last year all I did was till up an area with grass, but I did go over it 5 or 6 times to really break it up, and then covered it with black plastic and planted between the plastic.

That worked pretty well for me.

I second jwstell42. I didn't remove my sod.

Is your tiller underpowered and not really tearing it up? My old gas tiller had trouble with sod, but the electric tiller I replaced it with tears up sod like it's not even there.

If you tilled the soil when it was too wet, you could have destroyed the texture of the soil.
Why don't you put in a raised bed? I took some 2X12 yellow pine and built a 3X16 planter in less than 45 minutes. Then I fill it with a mixture of Composted manure, soil and peat moss.
These wood planters only last a couple of seasons, but are quick to set up and seem to be working well for me. I'll replace them with block before they rot.

What do you mean by a "mess"?

If you tangled your tiller blades with grass roots that's to be expected -- especially with bluegrass. Just stop periodically and use a good razor knife on the tangle.

If the tilled ground is full of dying grass its time to rake it out.

If the tilled ground is growing new grass like crazy -- that's a common phenomenon. Fluffing the soil has a beneficial effect on grass. I've always said that if I cared enough about grass to worry about how well my lawn grew I'd till it up and plant vegetables and I'd soon have the best grass in the neighborhood. LOL

Grubbing grass out of the former lawn to create a garden is a good deal of work. Tilling is only the first step.

Well, actually, either stripping or smothering it under a tillable mulch such as fall leaves for a year is the ideal first step, but that doesn't help you when you want to grow some food this year.

For the ongoing chore of uprooting and removing grass from the garden, I like to either sit there on the dirt with a 3-prong cultivator or use the long-handled, 5-prong cultivator. I think the pronged tools are better for grass than a hoe because they uproot it rather than just chop it off.

As the tilling reveals, chopping grass up just makes it grow faster.

Sometimes, when I'm grubbing grass, I think on the pioneers plowing the prairie to turn it into the breadbasket of the world that it is today. And I'm glad I'm not trying to de-grass anything bigger than a modest plot of vegetables.

I always have to be extremely careful not to till if the ground has moisture in it at all. If I do, it turns into cement.
If your soil is dry.....you just have to keep going over and over and over it with the tiller, and breaking it down.

just plant your plants normally and cover with copious amounts of mulch to smother the grass that is poking up so it won't grow. problem sizzolved