New garden plot

Hi,

best to divide area up in small sections and work on each section each day or week. dig it over with fork and spade and remove any weeds you can. can add manure on top and leave until spring to rot down and then use a rotivator to break and mix it up.

A lot depends on the type of soil you have and if you want to go down the organic route . I personaly would not go down the silage cover route let the soil breath . Take of the top layer of turf and stack it face to face . then cover the growing area with cardboard with any manure on top (hopefully the birds will take out any viable seeds) then in the spring dig it all in I would use a digging hoe for this . If you are on heavy clay then compost the manure separatly and rough dig as much as you can over winter to get the frosts to break the soil down and kill any bugs wire worms or slugs. after a year or so the stacked turfs can be put back into the growing area 

hi The use of black covers is also used to warm the soil for early planting etc however as this is a paddock I expect the aim was to kill off the weeds just as they will go dorment for the winter And again I think you have to work the soil you have if its a nice light loam then yes protect it if its a heavy clay it will never make a good early bed but a good frost into it will break it down

I also live in Ireland and I rough dug my plot i.e. turned it over in the Autumn of the first year, then covered it with heavy cardboard and farmyard manure and left it like that for the winter.  In the spring I dug the manure/cardboard into the soil and then rotivated it.  Worked well as I was ready to start planting earlier than if I had to do all the digging in the Spring.

Or just stick raised or lasagne beds on top.