If I'm breaking up ground by hand I like a four time garden fork

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=garden+fork&t=ffsb&ia=products

they seem to break up soil better than just turning it over with a shovel or spade.

Once done, I'm a really big fan of "No-till" gardening, heavy on the mulch. If not raised beds, lay out your beds and paths, add soil amendments of your choice, cover areas to be planted with cardboard (know anyone in the appliance business?). Cut 4-6" holes for started plants, or leave strips between pieces of cardboard for "rows" of carrots etc that are direct seeded. Cardboard works great in the raised beds also.

Once planted, cover the cardboard and any exposed soil around the base of plants (once they're established and the soil is warmed up) with straw, old hay, leaves, grass clippings, etc.

Drip system works best, but rain will get thru the cardboard by way of holes for plants and area for the row vegies. Or soaker hoses under the cardboard work great too and they don't get sun rot that way.

End of year, just leave the cardboard and mulch down to rot into the ground, be eaten by the "good bugs" (you have pill bugs or roly polies there?) and earthworms. Put down any more mulch you can acquire, the neighbors' leaves, old molded hay from yours or the neighbors' horses etc (sometimes you cna get some cheap from feed stores if any of theirs got wet.

Come next spring, pull the mulch aside and get to planting. Add extra fertilizer around the base of the new plants.

Why dig or run a tiller every year unless you need the exercise? I'm getting too old for that and I love established gardens for that reason. You're lucky someone left you one, or at least part of what you need.

Good luck this year,

Geno

PS, this book changed my gardening forever. I don't do it completely that way, but I do a whole lot less weeding, tilling, etc.

Stout, R. (1955). How to have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back: A New Method of Mulch Gardening. NewYork: Exposition Press.

She wrote others you may be able to find easier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Stout#Works

The desert is a true treasure for him who seeks refuge from men and the evil of men.
In it is contentment
In it is death and all you seek
(Quoted from "The Bleeding of the Stone" Ibrahim Al-Koni)

member of the cabal of dysfunctional squirrels?