I'm using the Back to Eden method of no dig gardening, and so far it's working well for me on my clay soil. Here's the original film I watched, about 1-1/2 hrs:
http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/#movieWhat a lot of people miss is that before you lay the thick layer of mulch down, you must spread some sort of paper/cardboard down first, then a layer of compost or manure down, and then the mulch. The paper will stop a lot of weeds but I did fork out the very large ones first. I spread cardboard everywhere, then about 2" of chicken manure, then about 4" of bark chips/mulch because it's what I could get for free. I let it sit all winter and come spring I was ready to plant, and wow, did I get a crop this past year. Weeds were very minimal (usually where the mulch was thinner), and I rarely had to water in our dry summers.
You can bet I'll be doing it again this year, but only adding more mulch, as much as I can hold of, because the manure is still working along with the thousands of worms that appeared out of nowhere, and hand pulling any large leftover weeds. My back and knees aren't quite they used to be so this is working out just dandy.
In my 2 ft tall raised beds, I simply heaped on manure then the mulch. Come spring I'll sprinkle more manure since I have lots of pigeon poo I need to shift, then several inches of mulch. Should mention that all my raised beds are lined inside with heavy poly to help hold in more moisture.
Most of the chips are already rotting down into lovely soil, so keeping several inches of chips on top is how it works. Ideally they should be 1 year old chips but I couldn't find any so I used fresh in winter and by spring they seemed to be just right. At the moment, most are partially decomposed, hence the topping up.