Are you able to post a photo?

@zqnmegan.

Unfortunately not. When I was first asked to help, I very quickly removed every head I could find, but lots had already been dropped.

In the worst bed I am removing as much of the soil as practical, before using a biodegradable weed mat then adding new compost.

The rest of the garden cannot be done this way, as they are full of perennials.

I am wondering if cheap hair gel and 360 Glyphosate painted on the foliage might work or cutting to below ground level and then covering with heavy duty black polythene - lots of scrabbling around on my belly to do this, but I will try ANYTHING.

It could also be walking or tree onions. Glyphosate doesn't work very well on many of the alliums. Best is to pick the heads when they show up and dig the clumps that produce them. A pile of work, but most of the bulbil producing alliums do not produce seed; so if you get all the clumps you got all the problems. Many of them do not pull, but rather break off when you try. Those will certainly come back; so digging out the clumps is the best. Be sure to dig when the clumps are in active growth. Many of them have a dormant period perhaps in middle to late summer, when they hide. If you dig them as the bulbils start to form on the tops, you should get them all rather easily (comparatively speaking of course). Many of the weedier alliums are quite resistant to weed spray; so that is more or less a waste of time anyway.

Sounds like Allium vineale - a very common weedy species here.

Tree onion and A vineale (wild garlic) have round hollow leaves. Native A canadiense which can also be quite weedy has solid, flat leaves. Of the first two, bulbs and larger plants are more likely to be tree onions. A. vineale is more likely to be more chive fine in more delicate clumps. All of them are quite edible and can be controlled by removal of the bulbils in the scape, since they seldom to never actually seed out. But you pretty much must dig out the clumps that are where you don't want them. If care is going to be spotty, it would probably be wise to dig them all out or they will likely spread back through everything again. Be careful to get the whole clump; any small piece left behind will almost certainly sprout into a new plant and then a new clump.

Hey guys and gals

Thank you all for you assistance with this 'Triffid'

I believe, as suggested and described, that I have A. vineale. The worst bed, 8' x 2', had, literally hundreds coming up. This, and the next very badly affected bed, are now being dug out and refilled with new compost, with a couple of layers of biodegradable weedmat in between. The other beds will have to be spot cleaned.

One thing that I find puzzling is the depth of some of the bulbs I am removing, which are several inches deep. When the garden was done over, in 2014, paving slabs were removed to make the beds, and it was then that the bulbs/bulbils were scattered around. Would these have pulled themselves down in that time?

Thanks again and very belated New Year's greetings to all out there.

Fof