Even if your goal is to turn a grassy area into a garden, breaking up sod may not be the solution it appears to be. As soon as you expose bare soil, something is going to want to grow there (Nature hates a vacuum). If you open up 8,000 sq. ft. and don't get it covered with new plantings and mulch right away, you'll have about 7,500 sq. ft. of weeds in a matter of weeks. All soil (unless it has been abused and rendered all but sterile) has plenty of latent weed seeds sitting ready to sprout given the opportunity. And the grass (especially the noxious grasses, like quackgrass) will come right back unless it is out-competed by a smother crop or blocked by mulch.
Consider building your gardens progressively, using the methods already mentioned (mulch, lasagna
gardening, cardboard, etc.) to avoid churning up the soil unnecessarily. Even a lawn has some established soil life (beneficial bacteria, fungi, insects, worms, etc.) that will be knocked back by plowing. Whatever you do, make sure that you keep the surface covered with something: wood chips,
straw, old moldy hay, leaves, branches, grass clippings, even geotextiles if you can't lay your hands on anything else. Use cover crops and smother crops wherever practical: buckwheat is a great soil builder; clover will compete effectively with grass and add nitrogen; squash and pumpkins allowed to sprawl will shade out most everything with their broad leaves. The most productive land is that which has the most diverse soil life, so you want to conserve what you have and build it up by providing plenty of organic matter and protecting it from drying up and blowing away.
If the goal is to loosen compacted soil so that roots have better access to deeper layers of the soil, try to get a hold of a subsoiler like those discussed
here. They do much less damage to the soil life and the natural stratification of the soil.
To give your plants the best chance, establish where they will grow and where you will walk at the outset and don't change it unless you want to give yourself lots of extra work. A garden path quickly becomes very compacted, and your plants want to grow on nice light, uncompacted soil. Keep weeds and grass down on your paths with more cardboard and wood chips or other heavy mulch. To maximize the amount of planting area, make your planting rows double-wide, so you can reach in from each side without stepping into the bed. For wider planted areas, place stepping stones strategically. Also, keep your paths narrow for the most part, but make sure you have a few that are wide enough for a wheelbarrow. Give some thought to layout: raised beds, sunken beds, curved beds, swales, mandala gardens, keyholes, spirals and other forms can all be used to manage wet, dry, windy, cold or hot sites to best advantage. Uninterrupted, regimented straight lines are rarely the best
permaculture solution.
Check out
Ruth Stout and Emilia Hazelip's approaches to
gardening. Both focus on minimizing effort, maximizing yield and building soil through heavy mulching. There are lots of discussions here on permies regarding their work.
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