Phillip,
I am a no-till gardener and I have never used any kind of mulch, newspaper or cardboard in my garden. Spend the winter and early spring getting rid of weeds that sprout. The nice thing about California is that the weeds will sprout all winter. When you plant out your veggies next spring, dig a hole and add whatever nutrients or compost you plan to use and plant a plant. Don't disturb the soil around your veggie 'holes' as the weed seeds below the soil surface will not sprout unless brought to the surface. You will have some weeds coming up around your newly planted veggies that you will have to pull.
Between not turning the soil and using drip, you will have a pretty weed free garden. I plant everything in well spaced holes that are about 5 gallon size. In a 5 gallon hole, you can plant 1 tomato or 1 eggplant, 3 or 4 pepper plants, or 3 or 4 cucumber or squash plants.
Here is a photo I took of my veggie garden a couple months ago. I have gone smaller in my Reno home. No more 1/4 acre veggie gardens for me. That's squash and cucumbers in the back, shiso against the wall, peppers in the middle and tomatoes at the near end. There are some yard long bean plants just starting in the blue tomato cage near the squash. This garden is also raised about 1 foot but that was more to keep people from walking on my garden than anything else - I needed some sort of defining border.
This is a photo of a vegetable garden in California that my girlfriend and I planted at our Church. We produced about 2000 lbs of produce a year for the local food bank. We did get our husbands to come out every spring and rototill rows for beets, turnips, carrots, radishes, peppers and onions but everything else was in a 5 gallon planting hole.
