Sure, I've done this especially in the back of large perennial beds where they don't show or between rows in veggie garden. The only problem for me is the esthetics of it. Make sure you shake off maximum soil from roots and that there are no seeds forming.

I don't practice food gardening so I can't say so much in that regard. I do this not so much for mulch purposes but out of time pressure and to "feed the soil". Those weeds robbed your favorite plants of resources so this is a way to give those resources back and saves you the trouble of gathering up the weeds and hauling them off somewhere. There are a few weeds that are tough enough that you would not want to do this with until you are sure they are thoroughly dead. In the heat of July most of your uprooted weeds should die and disappear fairly quickly.

I live in a very dry climate, and I do it all the time. The only exception would be stuff that roots very easily from the stem or the leaves, like purslane - that I'll compost first.

The people that always state you need to "get rid of your "weeds" " evidently assume most of us are unable to tell whether they have gone to seed or not, to that those "weeds" would be capable of rooting again, thye do not seem to think most people are smart enough. What you have done will work quite well, as long as there are no flower heads that have gone to seed adn even then it may not be that much of a problem if you remove those flower heads.

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm very much of the keep it simple gardening line. The whole idea of needing to avoid all "debris" in the garden seems pretty silly to me. Those rules are as noted above, for those who can't discern the details, and for those who use lots of chemicals and therefore don't have a good diverse population of beneficial bugs and microbes to keep any "problems" in check.

Here is a link that might be useful: TCLynx

That's the thing - they're robbing the crops we sowed, and this is the quickest way to turn them into food for those crops (blending and pouring would act more quickly).

But I do have horror-movie-like memories of lifting piles of weeds to find swarms of earwigs and slugs...Maybe the trick is to keep the layers thin? I ripped out masses of chicory yesterday and laid them around raspberries and strawberries, and today they are looking paper thin already. Beautiful chicory - too bad we don't run a chicory farm. The chickens got their feed as well - they like bitter greens.

Btw the seed packets that said Lettuce but turned out to be chicory were given to us by visitors to this interesting place. Other seed packets were what they said they were.

Here is a link that might be useful: ballenberg

When you have a good, healthy garden, the soil well endowed with organic matter adn covered with a good mulch the population of thingys such as earwigs, slugs, the sow and/or pill bugs, etc. will grow, because you have created and environment that is to their liking, cool, moist, with lots of food. That does not mean that this population expolosion is in any way harmful and some of us find no problem with the presence of these critters and the more balanced out ecosystem becomes the less of a problem they are.
People that have problems with these wee critters most likely have not gotten their ecosystem in balance yet.

I do it all the time. It's always just made sense to me.

And yes, while it does create cover for slugs and whatnot, I agree with what Kim says above......

If I get my garden ecosystem in balance will the robins stop taking pecks out of the strawberries?

Here's another idea I had today. Leave the weeds etc in heaps in the garden rows for a few days. Then toss them into a fenced-in patch of garden. Toss the chickens in the fenced-in area for a day. Put the chickens back in the coop. Toss the now-bug-free weeds back in the garden rows. Repeat until the muscle relaxants wear off.