Depends on what you want. I think your first idea may be the best from what I have seen of Iowa soil. The compost would not be needed for a year or two. Of course If you have access to it use it. You may want to till twice for weed control I have done that with my yard to move a garden spot. then I plant and things grow fine. not as good as an established bed. but well worth the planting.Check the extension agency in your area, they can give you master gardener contacts they will be of great help. I experiment with the ideas on here all the time, what fun! There must be thousands of ways to garden!

Curt~

My first year gardening, I was sad that I didn't have many weeds. I wanted to be out there working all day. Ha! That didn't last long.

Now I devote my time to the plants themselves. I am planning on placing some type of light mulch over the soil to control weeds. Maybe straw.

Kim

Tilling seems like a good move the first year or two then mulch the dickens out of it and stop tilling. Plant through your permanent mulch as soon as you have enough depth of mulch. A dear friend of mine said, "my mulch remains mulch until it slowly becomes compost".

I would consider and use: Mycorrhizae, trace minerals and organic fertilizer like 4-2-4.

Mycorrhiza is a relationship the fungi make with plant roots that is greatly retarded by tilling soil. That mycorrhizal relationship for any given plant involves different fungi and is not the same for various plants, so purchasing "mycorrhizal fungi" may be a waste of money since simply getting your soil into a good healthy condition will do the same thing, sooner. A soil that does not have a good level of organic matter will not have the fungi that would develop that relationship.
Start your garden with a good, reliable soil test and work on adding organic matter. A good planting bed can be made in any soil without tilling by covering that soil, and whatever is groing in it, with newspaper or cardboard and covering that with a good mulch material.

A good planting bed can be made in any soil without tilling by covering that soil, and whatever is groing in it, with newspaper or cardboard and covering that with a good mulch material.

But it cannot be accomplished in a few weeks or in time to plant for this season. If one started that process in fall, it may be plantable now.

Can you remove the weeds by hand? You will get much more satisfactory removal results if you can manually get rid of as many weeds as possible first. Tilling them in just seems to aggrevate the issue and spread weed seeds. And it certainly doesn't hurt to innoculate with mycorrhizal fungi - some prepared organic fertilizers already come innoculated or you can purchase the innoculant separately. Endomycorrhizae (aka VAM) are associated with about 70% of the plant world, including most herbaceous plants, which would include veggies. Using an innoculant (or a fert containing innoculant) will produce better results much faster than just letting nature take her course.

To get ready for this planting season, I'm going to recommend something that I'll get blasted for....apply some Roundup to kill off the active weeds/grass then till it with a little compost. After you smooth it down add a little more compost on top to help suppress any seeds that may be trying to germinate and then plant your veggies.

I don't understand the need for round-up if you'e going to till the plants in and then smother new seedlings.

The idea behind roundup is to kill the grass to the roots so it doesn't overpower your seedlings before they are big enough to multch in and is very effective low cost method to prepare a new garden and should only be needed one time

That chicken manure is great but don't put much on as it is very powerful it would be best to use that in your compost piles

It will not hurt a bit to throw down some cheap 12-0-12 for the first year to get everything growing while you make compost

I'm not gonna blast anybody for suggesting Roundup, but I sure hope they read this first....

Here is a link that might be useful: roundup?

The many times I have started a new planting bed using the newspaper and mulch over what ever was growing there allowed me to be planting in that bed in 4 to 6 weeks. Granted the soil was not quite as loose and workable as it would have been if I waited longer but planting was possible.
There is no good reason to use any product that will kill plants since simply depriving them of access to sunlight will do that quite well. The only real reason to use stuff to kill plants is to enrich the manufacturers of those products at your expense.