What is the best way to start a vegetable garden?

If you will put black plastic over it for a few weeks early in the spring the sun will kill the weeds and then you can do whatever you want and you won't have to worry about pulling them up.

Get the weeds out before you do anything else. They pull out easily with all the rain in our area. (I live in Portland.) Use a hoe to break up the roots and get out the big ones and then use a hoe to pull out the weed roots that are left. It's not hard to do in the next few weeks.

Then add compost. I use the steer manure from Home Depot as it is rather inexpensive and easy to transport. If you have a truck get a mushroom compost or four way soil mix. Put a four inch layer of compost over the whole area where you want the garden. Compost helps keep the weeds down and your garden will grow nicely.

If you don't get the weeds out first you'll always be fighting them. They do come out fairly easy this time of year.

I agree with Pjoblake. Always weed before amending your gardens soil. If you cover them up or till them in, they will just pop back up. Once you get the weeds out, please do not put top soil on the garden, it has no nutrition that the garden needs, that is what is put on the yard before grass is planted. There is garden soil or potting soil if you want to use that. Add the sterilized manure that you can buy at any garden center at big box stores. If your roommate chokes on the cost of the soil and everything, ask him if he wants to eat lots of fresh veggies this summer and fall or not. If the soil isn't amended correctly, the amount and quality of the produce may be lacking. If he doesn't want to help you weed the garden, like most guys don't, put down Preen Weed Preventer after you have amended and tilled the garden. It will cut down the amount of seed born weeds immensely. You should only have to deal with root born weeds like Creeping Charlie and tree seeds (not a weed until the sprout in the garden). Have fun playing in the dirt in the garden, don't let the boyfriend discourage you, have things done the way you want it (the right way) and you will have a great garden!

Look up "lasagna gardening." It is a real method using newspaper and other compost materials to build soil and to knock down weeds.

This post might help https://chascrazycreations.com/garden-101/