the best bet is use a weed wacker to get them under control then pull them on regular basis.

Anyone can make a huge fortune if he can find "an organic or homemade mixture that will kill the weeds but not my vegetable plants". My strategy is to spend 1 hour per week to remove large weeds because I have a small garden (28X20) and I want to be organic. It won't eliminate them, but I live along with weeds as long as they don't dominate the crops.

A weed wacker makes things look cosmetically nice but only hacks the off at ground level and they all grow right back. Dig them up by hand or use a cultivator. Pouring hot water directly on weeds will also kill them rather quick. After I can pickles that big pot of hot water gets strategically poured on weeds that attempt to grow around the walk and driveway

A weed whacker can keep the weeds from going to seed, and give one a bit more breathing space for more permanent solutions. I use mine to not just cut to the ground but also to cut the ground around the stems, many of those do not come back.

Hey, Brian! "For some reason" is how it has happened to all of us at one time or another.....we get lazy or busy or simply don't know how to wield a long handled hoe of some kind.

I easily spend a couple of hours a week in the actual physical act of gardening, much (not most) of it devoted to the hoeing or pulling of weeds.

Cardboard and weed cloth are my friends! Especially this year when I'm going away for 2 weeks during gardening season! Nancy

Pull weeds, Hoe weeds, run small tiller between rows, push plow with cultivator between weeds. Any or all of them, with weeds removed, THEN you can put down mulch to help control. If you have a bagger on your mower, grass clippings are good. If the city/town you live in recycles, you can precede the truck and pick up bags of grass clippings. I"ll let the "OMG" chorus come in with all the warnings about "Ensure the grass hasn't been treated with various terrible chemical agents," followed by "That much non composted green material will require addition of additonal nitrogen...." :-)

FWIW, I've been using grass clippings from my yard for years with no chemical side effects. Yes, I do sprinkle some 12-12-12 or whatever I have handy to help the process. I think that pulling the weeds and putting in a bucket or other container and removing from the garden is best. Pulling and leaving is really asking for trouble.

Najan.... has the best answer, you have to remove them religously. Some weeds never bothered me. Consider spacing rows such that as the garden grows, the desired plants will shade and stunt the undesired ones. However, you must keep after the weeds initially to allow this to happen.

I try to spend as many hours as possible per week out in my garden during our glorious, but short MN summers. Most of the time right now after work is spent building and turning compost piles, and mulching with finished compost around maturing plants, as well as pulling the relatively few weeds that I have. I look forward to finding weeds of different varieties, and often let them grow to be fairly large. I then chop them up and add them to my hot compost to increase the biodiversity of my finished product.

The best plan for a newly established garden is to try and keep on top of weeds daily, or at least weekly this time of year. If you are gone and the weeds make a comeback, there are no shortcuts, you must take the time to deal with them by pulling or hoeing. Once you build up a sufficient mulch layer, weeds will no longer be a big problem at all. I look at them as a resource now.

I love growing a vegetable garden but weeds are my dread -- my back just isn't made for long hours of weeding and I find hoeing not as effective as getting down and pulling them out completely. All the comments made are really helpful so thanks everyone :)

I'm always surprised about the woe expressed about weeds. I don't really get a lot. They are *never* taking over. My St. Augustine lawn likes to try to crawl into my garden bed, and I have occasional sprouts of spurge and cleaver. But it really isn't a big deal. I get out there and do some mostly cosmetic plucking once a week. I think the reason may be that my garden is among urban yards, so I really don't get a lot of windblown wild seed. Weeds beget weeds. I do mulch, but even where I don't mulch, the weeds are never a problem. If you are in a rural area that is largely wild, I suspect the problem would be lots worse.

Well I have gotten my answer, I'm going to polish up the hoe, and go to work :) ... Thanks for the advice everyone. It was kind of nice to see others from MN, I might have to hang around a bit more, and see if I can learn more :)

I share a 20 x 20 community garden plot with my 92 year old neighbor. We each have half the plot. After my first year, I had practically no weeds, but his half was a constant jungle, threatening the tomatoes he loved to grow every summer. I made a deal with him that I would take care of his weeds if he would water my veggies while I was gone. It took a whole season of vigilance, but now he is in his second weed-free year. Here are some things I learned.

• What causes weeds? Bare earth! Nature abhors a vacuum, as they say. The process of natural succession is nature's way of healing itself after disaster. First the grasses and quick growing annuals take over. That builds the soil so perennials, shrubs, and eventually trees and forest thrive. So when you are trying to keep bare garden soil weed free, you are not just dealing with stray seeds and roots - you actually have the whole force of the ecosystem working against you. (And it feels like it too, right?)
• As everyone above has said, once they are there you just have to bite the bullet and diligently dig them out. (Assuming it is mid-season and you have plants in the ground. If it is late fall or early spring consider smothering the whole bed lasagna style.) For my small plot I use a Hori Hori garden knife which is perfect for getting under the roots and then lifting the weed out of the soil roots and all.
• Prevention = mulch Since bare earth is the cause, the prevention solution is simple - cover every inch of the garden in either plants or mulch. Deprive the invaders of sunlight and soil. I use a thick mixture of straw, compost, grass clippings and coffee grounds because this will turn into compost by the end of the season killing two birds with one stone. But any dense mulch will serve the basic purpose of keeping weeds out.
• Prevention = cover crops Another way to cover bare ground is with cover crops. This is an especially good choice if you have a whole section or bed that will be unplanted for a season and you don't want to come back to weeds. Just as an example since we are at the beginning of summer, a thick sowing of buckwheat comes up quickly and in about a month is flowering and attracting bees and butterflies. It is super easy to pull out or chop off at ground level (before the flowers go to seed) and then drop the plants back into the bed for instant mulch. Or compost them and start a new crop for another month.
• Some weeding will still be needed. A few stragglers will find their way up. But instead of hours of labor, you will just need to go on weed patrol for about 10 minutes a week to keep things in check.

I am with others that said get some mulch. If you don't have the money to spend, use wet newspapers, grass clippings, leaves, etc. Other alternatives are straw, wood chips, or landscape fabric.

No long hours required.....at least not all in one session! Thirty minutes here and there is pretty much what I do. It's a good time to check for pests and beneficials, too, and keep track of those rapidly growing cukes and squash that seem to hide and get ginormous.

easy one... mulch.

I like weeding.

How about a flame weeder!!

Ease of weeding really depends on the soil you have. I have hard clay and in a bare soil garden, you have to dig those babies out with garden tools, hand pulling doesn't cut it. Mulch keeps the soil more pliable so it makes weeding easier, plus you get way fewer weeds. If I had nice soil, I probably wouldn't mind bare soil or weeding so much.

For those of you who suffer from aching backs after a session of weeding I have found something that really helps -- check it out and let me know what you think!

http://bestbacktherapy.com/index.php?REF=1094PV271.391

My strategy is as follows:

1) Mulch the beds

2) Mulch(heavy!) pathways

3) Pull what I see as I going through the garden for other needs

4) Pull as much weeds as I can while they are small and root is just single root - this will not mess the mulch and neighboring plants roots

5) If anything I missed is about to flower - drop all other things I am doing and at least rip and discard(Not in compost!) the future seeds

6) when making compost make sure it is coming through a hot stage to kill most of the weed seeds.