No, perennials will not come through 6-8" of wood chips. You should mulch around not over them. I use straw and chopped up leaves in the vegetable garden as a mulch. It's light, cheap, readily available, and decomposes to improve the soil. In addition to improving the soil and reducing (nothing eliminates) weeds, an organic mulch helps regulate soil moisture and temperature. The soil is always covered - mu. I pull the mulch back to plant seeds or bedding plants. I just keep adding it throughout the year around the plants and over the areas that aren't planted (as where one crop has finished and I intend to plant a succession crop). Wood chips are an organic mulch, but I would only use wood chips on areas I did not intend to plant - paths, areas surrounding the planting beds themselves. They do not break down as readily and, if they are mixed into the soil, can nitrogen rob to a less than desirable degree.

I put down landscape fabric on the walking/working paths, and covered with straw. In the beds, I mulch with a thick layer of fallen fall leaves between plants/plantings. The sooner you can get mulch down the better, it does help keep the weeds down. If you leave bare ground, nature will cover it for you...

What I'm trying this year is laying down landscape fabric right on top of the bed between the melon and squash vine rows -- was a tip from someone here. I used the landscape fabric pins, and I can just roll it up and store for the season, move where needed next season. My mistake was not buying dark brown or black -- the light-colored stuff is butt-ugly laying on top the ground, and I can see it from the house (don't have any leaves left to mulch over it with). Oh well. The vines grow so fast it won't bug me in a couple more weeks.

You really have to keep on top of the weeds -- they quickly get out of hand. I'm still battling quackgrass (!) that DH tilled in (!!) when we created the garden. I absolutely dreaded going out there the first year, what a giant weedy grassy mess, it was constant work. So the next spring I decided to lay down the fabric on the walking paths, that helped immensely. Still have a lot of weeds in the rows, though. I keep a big plastic nursery pot in the garden, when I'm out there putzing or harvesting I just reach down and pull -- a little here, a little there means fewer giant weeding sessions needed. The weeds pull easily if you stay on top of them -- weed-wacking them isn't really going to help, they're just going to come right back if they're perennial weeds or grass.

We use black plastic in most of our vegetable garden. It keeps weeds out entirely, except for on the planting sites. However, it's not the best solution for every crop, and you can't water through it. It's great for watermelon, muskmelons, tomatoes, herbs and such, but may be more difficult to use it effectively for say radishes, and other things you plant close together in rows. Also, it makes the soil hotter, which can be both good and bad. If you lay the plastic down some weeks before cutting any holes in it, it can potentially solarize the soil and kill a lot of the weed seeds. We did that on an area, this year, which before sprouted lambsquarter like crazy, but afterward it took a good while before we saw any weeds (and they weren't thick when they did sprout).

Landscaping fabric is similar, but weeds are known to grow through it more often, and it probably won't solarize the ground much, if at all, due to how it can breathe. However, you can water right through it. Black plastic is much easier to remove, though, IMO, and it retains water to a degree, such that you don't need to water as much, even though watering thoroughly is more of a challenge. In fact, on a large scale, you'd probably want to learn to dry farm if you used it (but it's great, if you're doing that), IMO.

Back to Eden is a series of videos by a guy who uses deep wood chips mulch on his large vegetable gardens and on everything, and it works great. Google it. He's a bit of a fundamentalist and talks about it,but this garden technique is hugely popular and successful.

@HighColdDesert Wood chip mulch (as well as shredded wood mulch) is very effective, and I really like it (especially for peppers). Ours seems to last a year or two before we need to add more to supplement it. So, on a large scale, it could be expensive, unless you've got a good source for them such as a whole tree chipper (or if you know someone with one) or something.

I use a weed wiggler type hoe to maintain weed control (one on the right). It's less effort to use than a regular hoe as it less disturbs the soil and "shaves" off the weed tops to leave them on the ground to breakdown as mulch. I use it about 2 days after each rainfall as it's best to catch the weeds early.

eta, my garden size is similar to yours, now if I can only devise a way to carry around a portable AC unit with me.

Thank you all. Yes, we are totally overwhelmed with tall weeds. DH weed wacked for two hours in the fruit tree area. Now, we are looking to get a ton of woodchips to cover it. He think he is going to rent a brush hog to clear the squash field and the area where we are growing greens after the harvest. Then again woodchips to cover it. The problem is the berry patch that planted all kinds of berries. I may have to hand weed around each plant and lightly mulch them like MaryMD said.

vghg that weeding tool is my garden partner x

Speaking of plants that keep the weeds out, muskmelons are great for that, in my garden. They shade the ground pretty thoroughly, and they grow thickly.

If you know someone getting rid of wall to wall carpet, cut it in strips to lay between rows, upside down. Makes a good path and lasts.

@HighColdDesert Thanks for the very interesting link Back to Eden. Paul Gautschi's way of gardening is so unconventional and so refreshing. Great!

I have no idea why hardware and farm stores don't carry good weeding tools. I grow in long narrow beds so use a hand weeder. My original was a Cape Cod weeder. A Vermont garden writer recommends a cobra headed weeder. They are similar. For quack grass I use a chopping motion to get the end under the weed, then I can pull it up. For young sprouted weeds I can just drag the L-shaped end thru the soil. For a long root like quack grass, sometimes I have to hold the main section in one hand and chop at the soil to get the long runner root out. The scuffle hoe mentioned above is good for long rows. I realize you can't hand weed such a large garden but a combination of tools and techniques should help. I put down thick layers of wet newspaper to edge a bed, then cover with grass clippings.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5734563/veggie-tales-july-2019#24334134

Wood chips are only a problem with nitrogen if they're mixed with the soil.