Good luck, Lily. I use a dandelion fork or that Japanese triangle but pulling by hand with gloves is best. Of course, I'm throwing in the towel here on that. Naturalistic can have grass and weeds.

a rose fork (with two prongs (?)) to weed root-y stuff in existing plants

a hori-hori-knife to get small stuff

a japanese weeding hoe, really sharp, to get plants by cutting off rosetts or the single root base, mostly for annual weeds

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in veggie-plots just a sharp hoe

I'm just wondering about the 'clover'. Sometimes people have Oxalis and refer to it as clover. If that's the case it's incredibly hard to remove, much worse than true clovers. The white morning glory sounds like a bindweed. Both these will not respond to hoeing or hand pulling which will only distribute fragments of root and bulbils and make the problem worse. Can you show pix of the culprits? It might be necessary to empty the garden and thoroughly dig the whole bed, removing every scrap of root. This is very time consuming but can be done.

Oh noooo flora you maybbe right . i think it is bind weed . i better do somethiing asap . here is the ” clover ”

has anyone tried vinegar fir killing weeds ? maybe boiling water but that seems like itll take quite some time to do

We've used vinegar for weeds. It isn't grocery store vinegar, but stronger horticultural vinegar. It works reasonably well, but the garden does smell like Italian dressing afterwards.

I've tried boiling water, but it never seems to do anything.

Thank you mad gallica. would you say it was damaging to plants around the weeds ?

We used it in gravel walks, so there weren't any other plants to damage. I'd assume that it causes issues to anything it touches.

A M Leonard Deluxe Soil Knife is my favorite weeding tool. It is so sharp and strong that those nasty tap rooted weeds practically jump out of the ground when I bring it out. The saw side can cut horizontally into fibrous weed roots or saw off errant tree roots. It digs far better than any other small shovel , opens bags of fertilizer or soil with ease, the notch cuts twine. I can get so much done with just the one tool in my hand, never having to find or reach for anything else, I use it every single day. It is shovel, scissor, saw, cutter, ruler all in your hand, and made of the highest quality . It is expensive for its size but so well worth it, I have bought 4 of them so I can be sure to always have it!

Ugh, Houzz is not currently accepting links, but if you google the name you will find it.

Panic over. That is indeed a true clover, not oxalis. Phew. You should be able to fork it out.

I mostly use my hands and they show it. I do have a $2 long metal stick with a tiny fork on the end that I pop grass and weeds with if my hands can't do it. This tool (the fork) makes a good ice pick and breaker on my bird bath. I don't have much of weed problem, though our house sits in the middle of desert hills filled with sagebrush and wild grasses, not to mention weeds. It's wild all around here. I do get loose tumbleweeds after a wind lots of time. Those are kind of fun to gather up. Diane

Hori-hori for grubbing out roots with minimum soil disturbance and a razor sharp hoe for annoying ground swallowers such as glechoma and gallium (which will eventually give it up in the face of a sustained assault with a knife on a stick).

Patience and hopeless determination, lol! I'm afraid to invest in an expensive special tool, since I lose stuff often. There's one area of my garden that is sort of a Bermuda Triangle for garden tools, it seems to me. So I just use an old hand saw to cut weeds down; if I lose it, so what.

Bindweed is hateful indeed. But I think I'm gradually making progress in reducing it's hold in some areas-digging out roots, yes, but also mulching with cardboard. If it's thick and strong enough, it lasts a long time, and the following year I find all these weakened white spirals of bindweed trying to grow,which are easy to remove.

Clover is a great weed, IMO; you mow it down and it adds nitrogen to the soil. Plus, it helps choke out other, uglier weeds.

I love clover too. both leaves and flowers are lovely. Last year I sowed a patch of crimson clover. But deers might like it even better. I have’t seen any flower buds maybe they get eaten by deers

My favorite solution in weed prone areas is double layered 6 mil black plastic with mulch over top and holes cut in it for shrubs. I know people say it’s not worth it because you have to deal with the plastic down the road. However for me, I would rather take it all up and redo the bed once every few years in a three day project than stay on top of weeding horrible weeds like spotted spurge all the time. Some of those weeds take over faster than I can keep up. I like to use this method to border my rose garden with a wide shrub bed, as it keeps grass and weeds from growing straight across under the fence into the rich, un-plasticed soil around the roses and perennials. That soil just has cardboard and mulch and does ok. Sorry you're dealing with this!

The wild white morning glory

It's fastest and easiest to use my hands, unless it's something like a dandelion then I'll loosen the taproot with a shovel and then pull. It's always easiest to weed after a good soaking; trying to weed dry soil is a bear.

I have a knife similar to Ben's, do not have much of weeds, lucky me.

PS. Keep reading the title as "wedding tools" second day. 😀

Given the picture of the clover, I'd use a spading fork to separate that into large clumps, then lift the clumps and break them apart to remove the clover and whatever else you don't want.

I'm a use hands person and pull, sometimes accompanied by a trowel. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of weeds - partially because I obsessively pull at the first sight of something I don't want in my garden.

I'd use a fork as party music suggests. I've never gardened on soil where persistent perennial weeds could be pulled by hand. Roots break off and leave fragments in the ground which just grow back.

Dandelion tool for dandelions and other simple taproots. 3-tined cultivator and hand pulling for matting weeds like grass and clover. Grab and yank for larger vining things like bittersweet (be prepared for the root to disturb surrounding pants and also move sharp objects so you don't fall on them if the root snaps). Shovel for trees.

For really nefarious plants (I'm looking at you creeping bellflower), take the desired plants out, pretty much bareroot them to assure no weed roots, then sift the dirt and dispose of anything that might be weed root (in the trash). You will need to dig and sift deeper and wider than you think to get rid of all the root tendrils.