I've never had that happen but I wouldn't remove the soil. It's growing weeds so it should be able to grow other plants IMHO.

You might have to hoe the weeds every year for a few years but it's good exercise!! LOL.

How about a mulch to smother the weeds in spring?

Just keep enriching the soil as you have and cuss a little everytime you have to do some hoeing.

Another reason why no one should buy soil, you simply have no idea what you are getting. Sellers of soil peddle some really atrocious stuff as something called "topsoil".
While it does take some time you can make your own topsoil simply by adding suffiecient quantities of organic matter to the soil you already have. You will not change your clay soil into clay loam nor will you change your sand into sandy loam but you can make some really good and productive topsoil with what you have by adding organic matter to it.

Try some of the weed ID sites. Some have photo galleries or allow entry of plant characteristics.
Weeds can be turned under after chopping up, 4-6" deep will see most of them decompose. Or pull them for addition to a compost pile.
Look for better quality to avoid the frustrations of importing weeds. I much prefer an organic certified potting mix, composted manure or my own compost.
Another option is a good green manure (cover crop) like a clover (red or white) or a fall/winter rye to out-compete the weeds. These can be early fall sown and turned under in spring a week or two before planting.
Mulching with newsprint (black ink only), straw mulch or dried grass clippings will stiffle weeds growth. Weeds will appear if the ground is left open.
Always keeping something covering the soil will reduce the weeds. Avoid excess nitrogen which encourages the aggressive weeds. Some weeds spread by rhisomes so need to be thoroughly removed; a finger-type (prongs/teeth) cultivator works well for me without needing to dig deep.
If you really must use a herbicide, try straight vinegar on the top growth of only the weeds. A sponge or paint brush aids in targeting only the weeds versus a broad spray.

Good luck.

I am unsure of your zone, but if you have time before really cold weather, you could cover the weedy areas with black plastic and "sterilize" your problem soil. The drawback is that this method kills everything--beneficial microorganisms, worms, etc. but they can be replaced by the addition of good compost in the spring. Otherwise, I fear you are going to get good practice at weeding.
If you buy soil in the future, please consider getting it from a reputable nursery. Then if weeds appear, you have someone that will a)refund your money or b)help you weed!

All soil is full of weed seeds Topsoil is just that soil that has eons of seeds in it usually striped form a construction site or gravel pit there is no process to deweed it or sterilize it

The solution mulch it heavy and definatly pull them before 7 feet tall you don't want to make more weed seeds keep on it its going to get a lot better

Weeds are most easily pulled after a rainfall. They make great compost, just let them spend enough time in the pile so that that seeds are decomposed and no longer viable. This kind of thing happens to all gardeners, my favorite story is about the time I bought some grass seed, to plant in a strip near the driveway where I had built a retaining wall. The grass came up just fine, along with considerable crabgrass! Our lawn had been free of crabgrass up 'till that point. Crabgrass makes great compost, too, but it is not fun to dig out...

2 things come to mind one is pull the weeds as they appear and use them in the mulch, would doubt they will pesist if they aren't allowed to mature. the other, use a good cover of mulch on the gardens that will stop most if not all weeds from germinating.

some weeds can be of benefit attracting the bugs to them so they leave your vege's alone they can also attract pollintors to your garden, but they can all add nutrient to your compost or be used to make a tea to water the plants with.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

Thanks for the tips and sharing your own "garden goofs" with me.

The ones that grew to 7+ feet...I thought they were my tomato plants at first. Then, when I figured out they weren't, my kids were so excited about "growing plants" that I didn't have the heart to rip them all out. LOL.

I'm going to try and keep weeding good. And, we're going to be regrading the whole area and bringing in more dirt to double my garden size for next spring. (YIKES! might mean more weeds!)

We're having to get what we can afford, so it will probably be "cheap dirt" again and I might be making the weeds worse for awhile.

I agree that homemade compost is the best. But, before anyone warns me off of buying more dirt let me explain. I'm NOT a crazy person (LOL).

We bought this place in summer 08. It was a bank foreclosure. It's about 1/2 acre. The whole place was run down. We love it, and it's getting beautiful and lots of TLC and repairs. But, we didn't know that it was actually a Drug Lab until after we owned it.

Our neighbors were great, luckily the only "yucky" neighbors were the ones the bank kicked out of our house!

At any rate, part of the yard had "leftover" drug stuff in huge burn piles. We made our animal pens and the play areas for our kids in the other parts of the yard. Then, we literally had to have the bad part of the yard excavated so we knew all the drug making chemicals and busted drug making equipment was gone.

After that was when I started bringing "clean" dirt from whatever sources I could to build it up into something I could use as a garden area.

Thanks again for the advice, you guys are awesome!

I don't agree that you "goofed." You did what you had to do to correct problems in your yard. It sounds like quite a project, and that you are making good progress. Weeds are part of gardening, you will always have to deal with them, unless you resort to toxic herbicides. I would rather pull weeds and make compost.

Making topsoil is very easy. All that needs to be done is add sufficient quantities of organic matter and allow the Soil Food Web to develop, which is what takes the time. That in the forest it takes many years to do that is only because of the fairly low levels of organic matter that do accumulate there in reality. Magdoff and van Es in their book Better Soils for Better Crops explain this.

Here is a link that might be useful: Better Soils for Better Crops

Ya, weed seeds in the soil is a pain but ya have to love a plant that can grow to 7+ feet tall in a season!

Lloyd

By definition, you can't "make" topsoil. You can amend and improve existing soil but you cannot create it.

Rye is supposed to suppress small seed germination as it decomposes and its the first thing up in the spring I didn't see where you live but you might still have time for a cover crop

My garden is in a field that the topsoil was stripped from and sold several years ago the first year I brought in several tons of manure-barnyard dirt great stuff but lost control of the weeds and had them about as tall as the house(:

I mowed it tilled, planted rye, after all the weeds got going in the spring shot it with roundup tilled and planted then used straw to mulch several inches deep and never hoed again
You might get by without the roundup but I wasn't taking any chances

Thanks jonas302. I'm in SW Indiana. I'm going to look up info on Rye. I don't know a lot about it, but that seems like a good place to start my next learning!

I've decided not to use any chemicals anywhere outback. I use only natural stuff even for cleaning out my pets and livestocks places.

I've got too many kids and animals that run loose and only two eyes. The animals will drink out of any water source they find and the kids are always playing in any water that's around.

Since I'm not a chemist, I've just stayed away from all chemicals, pesticides even store bought fertilizers. That way they aren't around for the kids to get into the containers, and I don't have to panic that the rain water could pick-up any chemicals from our ground and hurt anyone or animal that ingests it or gets it on their skin.

By definition "topsoil" is the top 4 to 6 inches of soil. A good healthy topsoil will have the mineral portion (the clay, silt, sand particles) that all soil is composed of and about 5 to 6 percent organic matter which allows the Soil Food Web to live and be active.
There are some people that appear to think that "topsoil" and loam (a specific soil type) are the same and they are not. Loam is a soil type that is composed of 45 percent sand, 20 percent clay, 20 percent silt, and about 5 percent organic matter. Loam can be "topsoil" but not all "topsoil" is loam.

If you cut or pulled the weeds before they set seeds, this may be the only year they are a problem.

When weed seedlings sprout, use a scuffle hoe and slice them out, or mulch over them.

Congratulations! You have clearly acquired some lovely fertile soil and you have an extra free gift of lots of greens to add to your compost heaps. Just hoe or pull the weeds next year and compost them. It's all good for your garden.

on the same note this is my yard after I had bulk dirt put down to grow a new lawn! Landscaper supplied the dirt for that purpose. Now I have a man eating weed garden! Not what I was going for