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I've had luck with the landscape fabric covered by chipped wood mulch. Very few weeds, and very easy to pull. Bermuda grass (and grassburrs) used to cover that area, and bermuda is almost impossible to get rid of.

My clear plastic solar cooking method, followed by heavy mulching has made that task much easier.

/johnny

I go barefoot in the garden to get toe grips in the soil. Mulch would hurt. I'd thought about plastic but that would be too slippery. Even the landscape fabric is almost too slippery because I really need to grip my toes into the soil. The nightmares last night over weeds woke me up at 3 AM. Maybe being out in the country has a lot to do with weeds. I plant very close together using a combo of sq ft and Jeavons for transplants and seeds are heavily broadcast. Still, zillions and zillions of weeds that look like small poinsettias. Don't know the name of them. They are easy to pull but I've pulled and pulled for years to no avail and each year there's more and more. Now days my knees say no more. I had a small area covered with weed fabric forever and pulled it up to plant peppers... two weeks later, a carpet of johnson grass and the poinsettia things.

There are pretty finches and cardinals at the feeders and the first canna bloomed today so lots of color outside the window.

I've identified the majority of the weeds in the main garden as toothed spurge. Nut grass is growing through the landscape fabric but it's the spurge that's causing real nightmares. Herbicides are supposed to kill it but I don't want to go the poison route. Besides, there are too many vegetable plants that would get killed with sprays.

The shady bed has mainly oxalis but I can control those.

The hot sunny side bed has mainly nut and johnson grass. Almost all its bermuda has been controlled, knock on wood. Each micro climate has it's own little set of problems.