One of the best things I've found for weed control is a mulch covering & the best source I've found is your lawn. I have a power walk behind lawn mower with a bag attachment so I catch the grass clippings & use them (CAUTION--make sure you do NOT treat your grass with a weed killer). This also helps build the tilth of your soil. Additionally my lawn mower can be used without the bag in a mulching mode & I use that in the fall on the leaves, heavily covered areas you have to go over multiple times. After the leaves have been mulched, I put the bag back on & collect the leaves for a mulch bin to be composted & used next summer. I've found that you have to mulch the leaves first because the mower won't chop the leaves up in the bagging mode.

When I put my plants in I lay brown paper bags around the base of the plants and throughout the beds. You can keep putting them down through the growing season. Grass clippings work to.

After years of drought and the rototiller breaking I had almost given up on the one side of the garden where I usually plant corn, squash and pumpkins. I splurged and bought some high quality woven landscape fabric like nurseries use and pegged it over the entire section. I opened four spots in the seams for pumpkins and squash. OMG, I never watered or weeded and had a bumper crop last summer. I'm hoping that this year I will be able to take out some sections and plant corn. Nice thing is that the landscape fabric is still good to use somewhere else. Other options like mentioned are grass clippings, paper bags or newspaper ... want to really try cover crops between the rows but haven't so far.