Thank you for your concerns and input.
With how the field is and in the time frame I need it, I still think tillage is going to be beneficial. Right now it's a Bermuda monoculture. After we break it up and shape the bed so that water flow is conserved (can't do this with without tilling and very important) We are going to mulch with straw and wine cap mushroom inoculate. The mushroom forms a smothering mat as well as produces tasty edibles and encourages soil life. With
compost placed where I put my transplants, underneath the mulch the soil life is going to thrive. If tilling is done with the perfect amount of moisture compaction is not an issue, and even if it is I plan on being no till after breaking it up this first time, and from then on it will be covered and be productive for a poly culture of vegetables.
For my first garden I defeated the Bermuda within two years while producing veggies with this method.
I've also gardened an area that had been sheet mulched with cardboard, the bermuda runners found the cardboard to be a habitat, it probably should have been re smothered but I really didn't like the cardboard. When it was laid the tape a stickers were still on it so I felt like I was growing in trash so I cleaned it out so I could mound and raise beds. This was in a heavy clay that needed this lift keep the plants from being flooded. This area had nut grass, oh what a pain that stuff is!
When you sheet mulch do you leave to cardboard for good and just keep adding more? How do you get to the soil? How do you shape garden beds?