The cardboard thing always works for me, but with cardboard on the first year you will be limited to planting large plants (such as tomatoes, no carrots or other direct seeded veggie), punching holes through the cardboard. I have a garden knife specifically for that purpose (punching holes in cardboard). I suggest cardboard this year (go to the nearest recycling center and load up). To hold it down, put down some mulch, I suggest of a type that will be gone in a few months, such as grass clippings (or even the weeds you just whacked, if they have not set seeds yet). In 3 months, carboard and mulch will be gone. The cardboard will kill the existing weeds and allow you one season of gardening but it will do nothing for the seed bank. You may have, say, a very persistent bramble survive three months under cardboard. For that, do buy Roundup and a small paintbrush. Paint a few leaves of the bramble with straight Roundup. This will not poison anyone and be extremely effective. I have a 1999 Roundup bottle which I use only this way. It lasts forever, of course. Now you have to worry about the seed bank. Solarization is best, as others have suggested. You can solarize half a garden while you garden in the other (mulched) half. Do solarization right: hermetically sealed edges, lots of watering, plenty of time, some light hoeing midway. In fact, I prefer to always add mulch, and when it becomes soil, it is weed free. You need to add lots of it because typically one foot of mulch becomes one inch of soil.

I have just planted dandelions, purslane, millet, wild lettuce in my garden beds to improve the soil. Weeds bring up many minerals that the veggies don't. I am not sure where the hate of weeds ever came from. Weeds improve the soil. I noticed in a bed when mulch was thin, and the grass came up through it, the English peas did better than in areas with thick (weedless) mulch, so now I encourage my weeds. The peas were more productive, and healthier. I have a notil garden, so I guess that is why. Constant tillage promotes weeds. Nature is trying to fix what we broke. Nature abhors bare ground. The more bare ground you have, the more weeds you will have. The more you til the worse your "so called" weed problem will be. When I needed to plant into a bed covered in weeds, I weed wacked it. I am sure it was faster and easier than chemicals or pulling. This was only to allow sun to hit the newly planted seeds and to provide mulch for the hungry soil life. Mostly I did this, to install a trellis for my cowpeas. I hate digging to insert the poles, but this is a one time thing (until the poles rot), so soil life should not be too angry with me. I was not interested in "killing" the weeds, just making them shorter. I use soil plugs in the mulch so I do not have to pull the mulch back to sow seeds. Seeds will not sprout where plants already exists thicky, which is the main reason I thick we got the idea weeds are bad. Just cut back the weeds where you plant the seed and and area around the spot to allow sun to hit it. Pulling weeds or crops is a no no for me. The roots aerate the soil, and provide food for the soil life after they die. Rootless soil get compacted easily and is very bad for soil life. When alive, any sort of roots are teaming with life to help your garden. Gardeners should get more in tune with nature (and the way God made earth's garden) and promote life not death, by killing weeds, pests, fungus, earthworms and other soil life. When killing is focused on, the work load increases. If soil life is killed by gardening practices that do not respect soil life, you will have to use fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and more water. Pests only are attracted to sick plants. Weeds only show up where they are needed. Feed the soil, not the plants. I planted cowpeas directly in the sod. It performed better than the mulched bed. The American Indians only weeded right around the freshly sown corn seeds, to help it to sprout and to let it get sunlight, but when the corn got taller they did not waste time on such silliness. I think that weeding came into vogue from places with extremely short and cold summers, like england. I guess the theory is, that bare soil is warmer. Everywhere else weeding is really not necessary. I think to emulate nature is the easiest way to garden. Here is some info on nature's way. The Weeds as Indicators Of Soil Conditions The Weeds Friends or Foe? The Using Weeds as Indicators of Turf Management and Environmental Conditions Soil Indicator Weeds Soil What Weeds Can Tell You About Your Garden Soil Controlling weeds and pests Soil Healthy Naturally Weed Power - Weeds and What they Mean If you are at battle with your weeds and like everything to look neat and tidy, then the newspaper and mulch thing works great. I had no weeds when I have used that technique. Mulch is hard to come by here in July and August in Texas, unless I plan to waste water by watering the yard to get the grass to grow in the heat of summer. That is how I decided to go with the flow and use nature's way to keep the soil cooler and moisture in by allowing weeds to get tall. The longer the weed's roots, the farther down water will penetrate.

Merrybookwoyrm (love the name) To be effective, glyphosate has to be applied to an actively growing plant with a reasonable amount of foliage. And it has to be applied with a spray that is heavy enough to wet that foliage. Most failures are due to removing the top foliage (mowing or weed-whacker) and then trying to "kill the rest", or to applying to water-stressed plants in the mistaken belief that they will be more susceptible. Whatever you are trying to kill off, water it thoroughly to get it growing, spray carefully, wait a couple of days for the glyphosate to translocate to the roots ... and THEN mow or weedwhack or whatever. It improves your kill rate.

Agreed. Boiling water for some things, smothering for some things, mutilation beyond recovery for some things, digging as a last resort (a matter of my opinion - some people would prefer shovel first.) If there was one quick, general answer to your question, there would be no need for this forum. Come on back with more specific questions! Weeds are so much easier to pull in loose, healthy soil. Are your weeds hard to pull?