We bought our house last year mainly because of the wonderful potential of the very large backyard for multiple gardens and landscaping. In late winter, we cleared years of overgrowth of honeysuckle off of the fences and years of neglected english ivy and a bunch of other ground creeping crud out of many of the beds as part of what we call our "phase I". I have had vegetables and flowers this summer in the newly cleared away beds.

I guess I should not be surprised at the incredible weed pressure that I've had in the gardens that were previously the most overgrown. Ironically though, the problems are not honeysuckle or ivy coming back, but other random weeds (one I know is creeping spurge)in the beds and what looks like wild grapevine up the fence. The grapevine practically laughed at me when I sprayed it with Roundup. The other vine that infests the fence has a spade-shaped leaf (I thought it was morning glory but it is not) with small white cluster flowers that smell wonderful.

I've been reading on this forum about the use of newspapers/mulch and I plan to give that a try. My question is this: Should the weed pressure decline the more years that I work the beds and keep up the battle? I need any encouragement that this will get better as the years go on. I can deal with some weeds since it is expected, but such an amount that we've had this year is tough!!!

Thanks for any advice. Also, if anyone know what that spade-leaf vine is, let me know.

Thanks.