I will be interested in seeing how you feel about the “weedblock” fabric in a few months. IME it doesn’t block weeds, just makes them more difficult to pull, and water movement isn’t as good. I use a combination of a scuffle hoe in unmulched areas (which would work well in your lovely, friable soil) and cardboard covered by an organic mulch such as shredded leaves where hoeing isn’t convenient such as in your covered row. Production crop folks who don’t use mulch, tilling or hoeing of some kind typically use a solid plastic mulch with drip irrigation set under the plastic IME.

Looks like you have a selection of critters who want to eat the crops. Wishing you luck at outsmarting them!

Like you, I haven't solved the empty bed growing weeds problem. We started two new asparagus beds last year, weeded them well this spring but didn't mulch them. Figured we would harvest lightly, I would keep up with weeds then fertilize and mulch. I took a lot of weeds to our weed dump.

But I like to use the lasagna method to start a new bed with a base of wet newspaper then layers of compostables. In the spring, top with composted horse manure. Winter squash seems to be doing well on this berm and hardly any weeds. First year is nice! You can put the newspapers down on top of weeds although I usually have old weedy lawn area. No need to rototill.

My early spring bed for broccoli, lettuce and red cabbage seedlings hasn't needed much weeding since the plants started growing and shading things out. I use a Cape Cod hand weeder. I put down weed block fabric last year for winter squash but lost the seedling plants to striped cucumber beetles. This year I planted tomatoes in the existing planting holes but I noticed that the fabric is deteriorating quickly. I'll pull it up this fall and never use it again.

Hardneck garlic planted last fall was thickly mulched with straw. There has been hardly any weeds this year. I harvested garlic scapes today and pulled up one weed. (It's a small patch, maybe 8 x 8.) Potatoes will also get a thick straw mulch after a first or second hilling. Another bed got an experimental planting of green cover crop late last summer. I've noticed that my beds are losing the organic matter they originally started with. The horse manure has a lot of bedding in it so that helps but I'm going to use more grass clippings as mulch and mulch beds in the fall to keep spring weeds from starting up. I know what it's like to dig up weeds like you did in the video.

Good luck with the critters. The deer mostly stay away but voles have been a problem in my garden. I also have more chipmunks that in the past have eat my entire ground cherry crop.

This year due to nongarden time constraints I have planted only half of my veggie garden. I put down big sheets of corrugated cardboard on the unplanted portion and covered them with wood shavings, and so far have had no weed issues. This is what I usually use for paths, so next seasonI will rake the wood shavings into rows for next year’s paths and I expect the cardboard will have broken down by then. I just this week planted squash in the middle, and expect them to spread over the entire area so that their shade will help reduce any possibility of weeds, though generally just the cardboard and mulch will do the trick. I am able to keep up with the weeds in the rest of the veggie garden, though I don’t know how well the perennials are faring as far as the weeds moving in and it is too hot to find out for now.