Planting diff veggies in one bed

I've been reading about guilds, companion planting etc.  My question is how do you weed between the things you want to keep when they are still small?

Last year I tried to plant some onions, cabbages, etc together and I put some basil around my tomato plants.  I couldn't hoe out weeds cos I had to be careful of all the friendlies in the beds.  My veggie garden is about 500 square metres.

I tend to tune out when weeding and often accidentally full out a tomato!  But if it's only tomatoes, I can focus on what they look like and zap everything else....  there goes the basil!

I've seen lovely pictures of garden beds full of veggies and would love that but I don't know how it is achieved practically.

Hey Riki,

Not that have we a lot of experience (yet) but here's how we've just done our beds. We had raised hugel beds done end of Autumn and once it was covered with good quality soil from the forest near by we've covered the whole thing with a layer of mulch - mostly consisting of leaves from last autumn that were left in the forest. Then wherever we wanted to plant veggies we could easily make a hole through the mulch and the soil and plant there. The onions and the carrots we inter-planted in rows separated by the mulch. It's a pitty i dont have photos taken but I will as we go along.

I see you're in Croatia, rather close by

the trick is to grow things so close together, they overlap just a wee bit, this shades the soil reducing weeds to a bare minimum.

There are 2 very similar threads with different titles

polycultre vs annuals

&

polycultures for annuals,

both of which are in sub-forum.

I pull out and drop the weeds that don't have a large root, if they are too large you can either cut them off with scissors or pruners and then pop some mulch over the root top left.

this won't work for some things like quack grass..and bindweed..better to pull those out before you put in the garden..or you'll be fighting with them until they are shaded out completely

How much mulch you need? Double that estimate!
About 20cm of mulch will pretty much eliminate weeds, as well as doing all sorts of other great things.
Carrots, parsnips and onions are the only things that don't get mulched in my garden. They're a small enough part of my garden that weeding them's not an issue.
Everywhere else, I pull back a bit of mulch, add compost, seed/seedling. Voila.
I avoid turning the soil and exposing weed seeds and have very few come up.
Everywhere that's not a garden is a rather healthy 'weed-patch' and I spend nearly as much time admiring those plants as mucking around in the garden itself.
While I encourage weeds outside the beds, they aren't welcome in the garden and the odd one that gets through doesn't last long.

Thanks for all the advice.  So I will mulch with as much as I can and then plant things close together and avoid turning the soil to expose weed seeds.  Quick question, what do i do with the weeds that currently in the garden, do i mulch over them or must i pull them out first?

Quick question, what do i do with the weeds that currently in the garden, do i mulch over them or must i pull them out first?

cut them at the base and use the greens as mulch. if it grows back, cut it again and be thankful for more free mulch.