Contemplating weeding

I would like some help thinking about weeding.
I don't have a background growing vegetables, so weeding is not part of my routine. I have a yard full of bermuda grass and other winter-emergent weeds, and usually I sort of carve the weeds back temporarily in order to plant perennials, and then the weeds return.
I have been interplanting perennials among them for years and I think I have reached the point where I need to learn to weed.
Unlike woody perennials which mostly do fine once they're taller than the bermuda grass and oxalis (or at least I don't lose them while finding out whether they like the conditions here), herbacious perennials seem to need me to keep track of them and clear around them so they don't get crowded out. After years of losing specimens I am just beginning to realize this.
But I worry when I clear the ground. Won't it dry out faster? Do the emergent plants need sun or moisture? Do they need other plants to grow upon? I guess I have to start thinking about the needs of individual plants. That's a lot to keep track of. Most of them I have no idea what they need, I'm just trying them out. And I find that the available information is contradictory and largely based in some other climate.
Do I need to mulch everywhere I weed? Obtaining and carrying buckets of mulch is not a pleasant task; I'm getting fragile and slow. I don't do my own composting, the city takes care of it. And chop&drop is a challenge to do without leaving trip hazards.
And what about the areas that don't have specimen plants, just the yard itself? Do I want to try to remove some of the less desireable plants? Sometimes I just want to feel useful while sitting on the ground, without having to think too much, or be careful not to hurt the plants I want.
Right now I'm weeding out the arums. They seem like a reasonable target. There are hundreds rather than thousands, so it's possible to make a dent in them, unlike sour grass or three cornered leek. And I have no use for them. I suspect that even if I sheet mulched for years they'd be right back. But I sit there wondering why I bother. I think the actual answer is to keep my hands busy while sitting in the sun. But it would be nice to think I'm improving my garden also.
In previous years I have put wood chips on most of the yard, which makes digging out the weeds a little complicated. The bermuda grass grows thickly over the wood chips. The bulby things like oxalis and arums grow below the chips. I have to dig through several layers of different textures to get to the actual dirt and roots. I don't regret the wood chips, they are nice and moist and growing so much mycelium. But digging isn't simple.
I leave little dents in the ground that make it uneven to walk on, which is a problem. Between mulching and weeding and planting, my yard is getting more and more bumpy textured. On the one hand that's great, I suspect it's good for water soaking in before it flows to the sidewalk. On the other hand, my friends and I are in our late 70's and are getting a little unsteady on our feet, so my garden is becoming a bit inaccessible.
Have you been at this longer than me? Have you any advice? Or thoughts? Or commiseration?

Ellen,

Nature is telling you soil is not meant to be bare. There are a couple of examples of a natural monoculture, but I can't recall where. Jerry Brunetti, in his book, The Farm As Ecosystem, discusses this. What I am learning is in a farming context, but it applies to anything growing. Read recently about non-mycorrhizal weeds (lambsquarters, pigweed, etc.) and why they flourish. These type weeds get the signal to grow in a soil short of mycorrhizae fungi and likely quite rich in phosphorus. This is what we saw here in 2025, we had what I will call a "weed expression". In 2024 we planted oats and we were quite weed free through the harvest. This farm had been farmed chemically for many years until we started our organic conversion (August 2023). I made the assumption that most of the weed seed bank had been exhausted due to all of the chemical used, this was not the case. In 2025 we planted soybeans in late May and the weeds took off during the growing season. What happened between 2024 (oats) and 2025 (soybeans)? In 2024 the oats were planted around April 20 and we started feeding the mycorrhizae, this took up some of the free phosphorus and provided a quick ground cover in competition with any weeds. In 2025 we planted soybeans in late May and there was not anything growing early to feed the soil life, so the weeds came in. The quality of the crop harvested both years was excellent, so I knew we were getting close on the basic soil fertility needs. A plant tissue test in 2024 confirmed this, realized then I needed a new soil lab as the one I was using said we were short of nearly everything.

I can't recommend enough the book Eco-farm by Charles Walters (Acres USA bookstore). The chapter, The Life Of Plants, describes how it all works. Think about some companion plants for your growing area that may provide some soil life, weed control and needed fertility, be creative.

I always chop and drop unless I'm intentionally trying to remove something permanently.

I'll also cover crop areas that I want nitrogen fixers to dominate.

I think you need a nice neighbor who enjoys hauling mulch :-)

I know that's not helpful,  but I have been thinking alot about gardening into an age when my body just can't do the tasks I do routinely now. I think the goal is a food forest: by the time I can't weed, my trees with be shading out the grasses,  and I'll be harvesting fruit. Perhaps your garden beds need to evolve to ground covering perennials?

Thanks everyone.
I don't really have beds. I don't have areas that have been cleared, and can be cover cropped. I mostly don't have annual weeds, most annuals can't compete here except some grasses, which I'm trying to eradicate by helping the bermuda grass crowd them out, and nasturtiums.
(I do have a neighbor who likes distributing mulch, but he works so fast I don't have the chance to tell him where to put it.) The bermuda grass runs over the mulch and the bulbous weeds grow up through it.
(And now that I have an electric car I have to park in the driveway to charge it, so I have no room to get a chip drop.)
My plants are sort of scattered all over, working from the fence towards the center, which is open for a feeling of space. Maybe it's all one bed. More like scattered guilds. I've kind of worked down from the canopy layer through the shrub layer, and now I'm working on the ground. The area I'm trying to work with is largely the spaces around the woody perennials. I'm attempting to establish herbaceous perennials in the in-between spaces. California and oriental poppy, herbaceous and itoh peonies, angelica, skullcap, artichoke, asparagus, yampah, solomon's seal, sochan, leopard lily, elk clover, strawberry, biscuit root, yerba mansa, valerian, larkspur, western coltsfoot, waterleaf, and so on.
I'd even like some annuals but they just can't compete; the bulbous weeds come up too early and shade them out before they can sprout.
Some of the herbaceous perennials compete just fine, such as dandelion, pipevine, leather root, lemon balm, chilacayote, cow parsnip, comfrey. It's the rest I'm trying to learn how to nurture.
And I guess the question about the arums kind of boils down to whether I want to try to generally eradicate some plants I dislike in the larger area, not only where I'm establishing other plants. I'm trying to increase diversity and naturalize more native plants and edibles. Perhaps I'm decreasing the competitive advantage of the established invasives and diminshing the pool of starts available to come up where I don't want them? I guess that's my hope.

One permaculture adage is: the problem is the solution. You seem to have too much rabbit food (or cavy food, or ...). Having to feed them motivates to weed, and the droppings serve as valuable soil amendment for your crops.

Maybe it is feasible for you?

I wonder if raised beds could be an option, growing things in containers?  Bermuda grass is a rough one because its so pervasive.

A 3-pronged hand tool is good for raking/grabbing bermuda grass off of mulch. Just keep at it. In the rainy season you will need to toss the grass (and bits of clinging mulch) into a bin, but in the summer you can just rip it free from the soil and let it dry out. Instead of chop and drop, sort of rip and drop.

Don't try to do the whole yard, just protect your favored plants. Think of the guys that paint the Golden Gate Bridge - just keep repeating. That grass is pulling carbon from the air, so thank you grass, we just don't want you here.

Oh this is so interesting. Even the answers I have to say No to help me define what it is I am thinking about, and how to observe and interact in this particular context.

I think i can break it down to two sort-of-related issues.
The first question is how to establish the herbaceous perennials and keep them alive from year to year.
I'm unwilling to keep animals, I'm just not that dependable. Cavies or rabbits (which I hadn't thought about) would be a much better choice than the goats I wanted but couldn't figure out how to manage. I had a very traumatic experience once killing a rabbit for meat once, and haven't considered them since. I suppose they could be pets, but I don't even keep pets.
Raised beds or containers are not the answer. I'm trying to establish self-sustaining herbaceous perennials (such as the yarrow that I excavated this morning) under and around my fruit trees and woody perennials, in order to gradually replace the dominant bulbous and rhizomatous and toxic weeds, or at least diversify the herbaceous and ground cover layers.
My favored plants are scattered around the entire yard. I'm working to find out which ones need weeding and which ones will come up through the weeds. Unfortunately, after they go dormant and get covered in sour grass and bermuda grass, I forget they exist. So I have to weed just to find out what is there. And of course, the ones I remember aren't necessarity findable. Nor do they all come up at once.
Part of the answer might be to use more tomato cages.
Part of the answer is simply to weed more. That's what I'm learning how to do. The woody perennials are visible above the weeds, and so they tend to survive neglect after I plant them. But the flowers and herbs that I plant under them get lost and shaded out. I need to learn new habits and strategies now that I have reached the ground level.

The other question is whether it's worthwhile to dig up those nasty arums that pop up by the hundreds. It's so satisfying when I get the rhizome out. And nicely mindless when I need that. But it's tedious and endless. Is it useful? Will it slow down their spread any? Is it hopeless as long as any remain? Could I just break off the tops year after year and that would eventually starve them out? And can they be fed to animals, or are they just as toxic to cuys and rabbits as to humans?

I think I even see a purpose to all those silly garden ornaments; gnomes, painted butterflies on sticks, reflecting balls, etc. I guess I have to collect them. I won't even be too embarrassed...

Hi Ellen, just one suggestion , could you try Mizuno, arugula, dandelion, turnips, sorrel, et al
Having plants that reseed and compete along the margins, that are also edible, is good for us. They might not vanquish the devilish Bermuda but will try...

That's an interesting suggestion, and it brings up the whole question of reseeding.
How do you get desired plants to reseed? Is it primarily a matter of keeping the ground bare? Watered?
I'm not much of a vegetable gardener. I have tried to grow arugua and turnips to no avail, let alone reseeding. I have established dandelions, though they're not spreading fast.
I thought I didn't have any reseeders; a walk through the garden showed me otherwise. But they're not what I want for a border: nasturtium, alexanders, hare barley/foxtails, ripgut and cheatgrass, annual vetch, spurge, poke.
How to encourage desired reseeders while discouraging the problems? I can't keep up with the weeding as it is!