Well, live and adapt. This land is going to be way too soggy, especially in the Spring, to do the kind of no-till garden I was originally planning. I imagine it dries out towards summer, but by then I already need to have stuff going.
What I am going to do is build a series of keyhole gardens. They will be composed of wire mesh set into the ground with PVC stakes (because I happen to have both things on hand.) Because I don't want to dig the quantity of soil that would be necessary to fill the approximately 2-3 foot tall by 10 foot in diameter garden bed, I am initially going to fill the whole thing with "hay." The quotes on the hay are because what I am actually talking about is whatever dead vegetation I have around here, which is mostly grass but also weeds and such. I would just order a ton of hay, but I have learned from experience that such hay is often grown with herbicides which aren't good for growing other plants in. Hay is grown to feed horses and cows, not grow plants. So to be certain that my hay is herbicide-free, I have to gather what is here, which is grass and weeds and whatnot but definitely nobody has been spraying chemicals on it. This is however rather labor-intensive and requires a number of sunny dry days so I can cut the "hay" with an oversized hedge trimmer, and sunny days are in short supply around here lately.
Now, plants grown in hay alone isn't going to work too great. So once I have the bed entirely filled with hay and it has had a chance to tamp down (and maybe more hay added,) when I plant I am going to make a hole in the hay around each seed or seed cluster and fill said hole with Miracle Gro garden soil. Then I plant the seeds in it. Over time I add more organic matter until voila! The whole thing is basically soil. The cardboard (weed blocker) underneath the keyhole gardens will break down with time, giving access to the nutrient-rich clay beneath, and meanwhile the grass and weed roots underneath the cardboard will have died and broken down, creating channels for my crop roots.
The immediate problem with this plan is that it is a lot of work and it depends on sunny days for cutting hay that I don't typically have a lot of now. So I might only get a couple of these gardens done in time for spring planting. I am wanting to have many such, but it may be next year before I fully colonize my gardening space with the keyhole gardens. The long-term problem is that the garden walls are made of steel mesh, which will rust over time but I don't anticipate a huge problem with repairing them. Just slap some new steel mesh around the outside. The contents of the garden might also ooze out through the mesh over time: I will be using cardboard initially to help the mesh hold in the contents, but I can anticipate that not lasting a super long time. However the loss of structural integrity of the cardboard can also be a bonus: I can plant stuff like strawberries into the side of the garden on the south-facing side. I have enough of this fiberglass cloth stuff (that was also just lying around on the property) to line one of the garden beds, but not enough for more than that and I am really not wanting to buy more to line the beds.
I have one of the keyhole gardens built and partially filled with hay, but at this point I will be lucky to have it done in time to plant corn in it, especially if the wet weather keeps up. I can get started on the second one at any time since building the wire mesh framework is not weather-dependent, just filling it is. I also have some snow peas starting in a no-till bed but they may get waterlogged.
Live and adapt to the land, that is the ticket.
