Tiffany, I love you.

thank you for posting that lecture, I've been trying to convey to my husband since spring that there's a difference between soil and dirt!

A huge component of a healthy soil is not that it is worked less frequently, but that it is worked gently, and pulling unwanted plant growth (aka weeds) is usually not enough to disturb the soil biology enough to cause problems. Planting seeds or seedlings disturbs soil just as much as pulling those unwanted plants and does not cause major disruption in the life of the Soil Food Web.

kimmq is kimmsr

Lat., Dr. Elaine is a hero of mine! Happy to share the link to that.

Forgot to say yesterday, if one has a whole patch of unwanted growth, smothering is the least disturbing & most beneficial to soil life/fertility, assuming the unwanted growth is of a type that can be served their demise that way.

What weeds are you dealing with, Camper?

Thank you for the responses everyone. Tiffany, thanks! I was thinking about smothering as well. It just seems more humane and less barbaric...joking of course :). Its hard for me to identify which kinds of weeds they are specifically but some of them really are big and in overly large patches. Also many of them are so anchored into the ground that its just too much of a pain to pull out for extended periods of time.

Happy to share. Getting rid of whatever's already there where one wants a garden to be is the hardest part! Smothering is more humane, I agree! And so much easier than trying to dig stuff up, benefits the soil vs. disturbing.

It's not necessary to ID unwanted plants to kill them, but just to make sure you're not going to spend time trying to smother something that won't go away so easily, you could share a few pics here, if possible.

If you happen to have baby trees, chameleon plant, bamboo, something that people often fail to kill with an easy smother, it would be good for you to know up front.

If nothing has woody stems, smothering should work well, exceptionally determined plants notwithstanding. Corrugated cardboard works much more thoroughly than newspaper, overlap seams well, remove any tape or staples. Cover with enough mulch/leaves/pine needles/whatever organic matter you have to finish completely blocking the light, and to add enough weight so that unwanted plants can't push up & creep under to the edges. The more greenery (like lawn clippings, kitchen scraps) you can add, the faster the cardboard & other browns will decompose. Installing already-growing plants the next year is easy, just dig holes.

Even unwanted plants contribute valuable organic matter back to the soil, as long as they are pulled or smothered before dropping seeds.