Can't help ya keepitlow- I'm drowning in bugs!!!!!
Weeds are the least of my problems, lol.

Weeds! I wait for them to grow so I have something to do!
Check out square foot gardening. That's what I did when I got tired of being buried in weeds every year lol.

Curt~#

This year I garden with transplants. I put newspaper around them. Then I spread organic preen and reapplied about every 4 weeks. Finally I mulched with a free load of hardwood mulch. This is the first year my garden is not overrun with weeds. I still had problems with a rhizomatous grass that is in the garden. Just now I have a little crabgrass and one other weed popping up but they are so few they are easy to spot and pull.

I mulch thickly in late spring, summer and early autumn - primarily for moisture retention but it pretty much blocks weeds, too.

I don't mulch in winter since I want whatever warmth I can get in the soil, but weeds aren't generally growing much then. I pull out the odd weed but never actually have to go out to the garden for the purpose of weeding.

Also I don't till, I have dedicated in-ground beds that I just fluff up as required with a garden fork, so I'm not getting a lot of new seeds exposed each spring.

Maybe you will learn to like weeding like Me!!!

Putting on enough mulch (inches, not a light covering) early on can be a bit of a hit on the pocketbook depending on your mulch type and source.

It sure saves a lot of time and hassle later, though. Straw (without seed heads/not hay) is my favorite.

Cardboard between rows. Smothers the weeds, and worms love it. If you don't like the way it looks, cover it with grass clippings or straw or whatever.

After the plants are done, cardboard can cover the rows, too. Makes a nice clean slate for next year.

When you plant, lay down a bunch of sheets of newspaper or cardboard around the plants and cover with a thick (3 to 4 inches) grass clippings. This is the only reason I have a walk behind mower. I works really well for a long time.

Weeds! Weeds! Weeds! I've started to think that maybe I should try and grow grass in my garden to transplant into the yard. LOL! I do put cardboard down in walkways, but there is still a lot of weeds. We had some rain this week and the weeds got WAAAAAYYYY ahead of me.

Wow, tomorrow I have my sights on some freshly sprouted weeds...can hardly wait.

My garden is about 1,000 square feet of planted area. And I have very few weeds.

My friends are the scuffle hoe, the Rogue Hoe and a Warren Hoe (Pointed hoe.)

I use one of them every day except Saturday on all the bare spots in the garden and up close to the plants. I don't work in the garden on Saturday.

The Scuffle Hoe gets weeds before they sprout. The Rogue hoe is better when the soil is moister and it cuts any weeds off below the surface. The Warren hoe is something I use just once in awhile when the soil is too moist for the other hoes.

It takes maybe 10 minutes a day to do the entire garden.

Weeds seldom get a chance to grow up except among the tall, crowded plants like beans. Every so often, I pull the ones that poke out the top, but there aren't many of them.

Be careful about hoeing the day after it rains as that can compact the soil.

You can see a video of me using the scuffle hoe here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/bnaiorpueblo#p/c/64D03F492F3DBF8E/0/10jJxyDFWPQ

'Weeds seldom get a chance to grow up except among the tall, crowded plants like beans.'

Ah...this is where I have trouble. With crowded plants. I also have 32 in ground beds to look after and 40 trees to weed under.

Next season I plan on less crowded conditions.

Black plastic and lots of it. I would never garden any other way again. I've also been using old carpet in paths and around trees and shrubs. It would be good for the annuals except it's just so darn tough to cut holes through. Carpet requires mulching over the top as well, whereas plastic doesn't. But both do a wonderful job keeping weeds down to a minimal, manageable level.

"'Weeds seldom get a chance to grow up except among the tall, crowded plants like beans.'
Ah...this is where I have trouble. With crowded plants. I also have 32 in ground beds to look after and 40 trees to weed under.

Next season I plan on less crowded conditions"

How close together do you plant your beans. I plant bush beans about 3 or 4 inches apart. Peas a couple of inches. Parsnips, turnips, carrots, about 2 or 3 inches. Beets, about 3 inches.

What few weeds do come up among them could be left and the vegetables would still produce well.

One thing I forgot to mention is I use drip irrigation with emitters every 12 inches. They drip .4 gallons per hour. Most of the water goes straight down before spreading out below the surface. Maybe I get weed seeds and don't know it as they never germinate.

40 trees sounds fun. What kind are they?

I plant everything close. Seems I have 'big eyes' to grow lots, but have small spaces do it it in.

Fruit trees?

All the usual suspects...stone fruit, apples, figs, cherry, persimmons, Asian pears, mulberry.

keepitlow, do you till your soil? I imagine that if a person were diligent about weeding in a tilled garden bed, eventually the amount of weed seeds would drop to a point where it wasn't so hard to keep up.

I don't till and I mulch heavily. I do get weeds, but I'm not overrun.

Vigilance against weeds will produce less weeds. Still, there is one pesky one [purslane] that seeds so heavily that a few skipped ones the year before causes a lot of ......?

Still, the link below is kind of [1]...helpful? [2] disgusting? [3] hopeful?

Here is a link that might be useful: Weeds

Weeds are awesome for soil/prairie restoration. It prevents runoff in untended parts of the landscape as well as providing a host for ranges of insects/pests that can help break down it all through feeding destruction. They break up old soils, get earthworms up in there, and their cycles of life/death supply organic matter to the soil...which the worms/grubs/roots work to lower levels of the soil profiles.

That said, they can stay the hell outta my garden and stay on the pastures until the trees are big enough to shade that ecosystem out...which just leads to new understory weeds. Fun stuff.

My garden soil is "restored" and healthy enough without the help of a basic step of ecology land reclamation.