Reducing weed pressure without poisons, tillage, or tarps

I was wondering what other folks here with large gardens and market gardens do to deal with unwanted weeds?

Do you have any good strategies for dealing with weeds both during the growing season, and outside the growing season?

This year we managed to keep some parts of the garden well weeded during the growing season, but now it is late autumn and very damp I’m wondering if the weeds are just going to come back to life if I rip them up and leave them on the beds like I do in summer.

I’ve also never quite got the hang of regularly using green manures. Does anyone successfully use these for fertility and weed control on a large garden without tarps or machines? What is your process?

In gardens with lots of annual weeds, which crops do you grow that will actually come up quickly and not get shaded out and taken over by weeds?

We have 3 large annual gardens. One of them is overrun with radish weed from me being lazy and letting weeds go to seed a few years ago (and I don’t like to eat radish weed). The second and third have sheep sorrel problems in parts, along with some other weeds around the place. Grasses can be a problem everywhere.

Similar problem here!  I've been letting grass grow to about `5 cm high then pulling it and leaving it in 2-handful bunches with the roots exposed. Left in rows while I do the next piece.  That seems to be doing the trick, none has come back to life.  Then I use the large leaves from the rhubarb as weed suppressors, aided and abetted by some shade cloth placed around the rhubarb plants - also aids with water retention during summer.  Elsewhere in the veggie plot, I use the hoe while the sprouts of things like cleavers and fumitory weeds are still small.  Any thistles I have to dig.
I should add that most of my nuisance weeds are the result of growing a trial "crop" to try out for natural dye - no bargains there, most made wishy-washy yellows!

Dense planting has made the biggest difference for me. Once the canopy closes over a bed there's just not enough light for most weeds to get going. Takes a bit of planning to time it right but it's cut down the hand weeding a lot. For the gaps between seasons I've been using cardboard under a thin layer of wood chip, nothing fancy but it smothers most things through winter.

I move my garden towards perennials, trees, and bushes, because of reduced weed pressure compared to annual gardens.

If you want to weed, I recommend doing it often—taking out tender weeds early rather than waiting till they grow larger.

after plowing and planting you have to get in there with a hoe or cultivator as soon as seeds sprout and you can identify the things you planted. I have horrific weed problem with several types of rhizomes with roots that seem to go to china. I cut out what I can with cultivating hopefully in several more years of keeping garden spaces plowed up the weed pressure will subside.

Chop and drop before the weeds go to seed/bloom.

Similar to chop and drop which works great, I still rely on sheet mulching with local unsprayed hay.  10-12 bales left out over winter decomposing separates into thin 2” sheets, and covers my 1/2 acre garden.  Literally cover the weeds, and around the annuals. Equal nitrogen source ie. composted cow manure needs to accompany mass of hay you use to balance soil.  Dense planting, companion planting, vertical scaling all help, together you may never need to weed again. My Mom still can’t believe I never weed.  

David Nightingale wrote:Similar to chop and drop which works great, I still rely on sheet mulching with local unsprayed hay.  10-12 bales left out over winter decomposing separates into thin 2” sheets, and covers my 1/2 acre garden.  Literally cover the weeds, and around the annuals. Equal nitrogen source ie. composted cow manure needs to accompany mass of hay you use to balance soil.  Dense planting, companion planting, vertical scaling all help, together you may never need to weed again. My Mom still can’t believe I never weed.  

Do you ever find that the hay creates a bunch of grass in the garden?

Spilled hay around my homestead often turns into grass. We have a lot of organic hay around locally so it would be good to use this for mulch if I weren't so paranoid about getting grass overtaking the veggie garden!

Ahh this might sound silly, but yes as more grass/weeds come up you keep covering them with more sheet hay and manure. Just keep C and N equal proportions.  I sheet mulch Late February then make it thru June before I have to cover again, but that’s weed clean.  So you need a 30%+ reserve of hay (C carbon) and compost (N nitrogen).  
Over winter I place small amounts of chicken manure in rows or rove the chicken tractors over the area slowly (1 week before moving)  where I will plant higher nitrogen crops (Corn being the worst, which I do not grow).  This process with just a few more adjustments yields as high as any modern fertilizer system over ACRES.  In areas with acidic natural soil pH’s, some amounts of aglime just before planting maybe necessary.  I prefer dolomite if possible.  New grass hay yearly is important  as bacillus bacteria in grass hay dominates soil ecology even in extreme climates as you overhead water it.  Operating this system for 2-3 cycles over 6 years will produce a soil you can grow in for a 6-8 years without these processes and near same production if it became necessary.  Hope it helps. Cheers.

Apologies if I linked this article before, here it goes again.

https://www.mofga.org/stories/farming/martens-farm/

Klaas Martens talks about non mycorrhizal weeds and why they take off.  The weeds get the all clear signal because the mycorrhizae are not in sufficient numbers to take up the soil nutrients. This is why I try to do a cover crop along with the garden plants, to make the environment less favorable for weeds.  Soil is not meant to be bare; the weeds are indicators of fertility and also sufficient amounts of certain nutrients. Phosphorus and lambsquarters for instance.