Turning Pasture into Garden... critique my plans :)

I'm looking at turning about 5000sqft of pasture into a garden.  Although I would like to do no till going forward, I think I'll till once at the beginning so that I don't have a billion weeds. So here's my plan: till it up well, cover with a 6-12" layer of rotted horse manure (I have free access to lots), cover that with a layer of hay. Thoughts? I'd like to have some sort of cover crop to fill in the gaps and suppress weeds, any recommendations?

Thanks!!!

sounds generally fine. you’re going to have weeds, though. to really minimize them, plan on lots of hay for mulch. like 6 or 8 inches or more once pressed down a bit. there will be seeds in everything- the ground, the manure, and the hay. plus chopped up bits of perennial weed roots from the tilling. if the top layer of mulch isn’t deep enough to shade everything completely you’ll have a lot coming up through.