Really interesting lazy bed method which still involves a spade but sounds very exciting as a way of dealing with new ground!
visit lazy bed page here – the site is fascinating

This is one of my favourite Youtube channels – he does loads of interesting videos, but here is lazy bed making in action!

So what’s a lazy bed?

You pick a plot of land – untended grassed land. Which is often what people start with in their own gardens or on brand new allotments. You cut the grass as short as possibe. Mark off an area into thirds. Somewhere between 2-3ft seems to be a good width – so 6-9ft section of grass. The bed can be as long as you like.
You can lay on the central section manure or rotted compost.
You then cut a straight edge at the far edge of the marked area and slice under the turf and fold it over on to the middle section. Ideally you’ll keep a hinge of grass intact as this helps the appearance and action of the bed.
You then cut a straight edge on the left edge and fold this egde over on to the middle section.

So now you have a middle section that is considerably higher than the two side edges, but all the grass is inside and the roots are exposed. This should kill off the grass.
This might not work for nasty couch grass but it’s so simple in theory that you might want to risk giving it a try.
These beds work best with something prolific growing that will help smother the grass and weeds that might grow out of the folded turf.
Potatoes, oca, even nasturtians could all help smother the grass with foliage

To me this sounds like a great way of starting off a growing patch in your back garden. This is assuming you have a reasonable lawn. Couch grass infected soil might work – but couch grass is pretty persistent so it’s going to keep going I think.
Doesn’t look as hard work as actually double digging and certainly solves the issue many people have with what to do with turf they remove when digging.