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Garden gets so overgrown with weeds and stupid plants...?

I am hopeless in the garden. My garden is about 20 metres by 15 metres and it used to be a bit of a wilderness garden, tall plants, a pond, fruit bushes, etc before it was mine. I don't have the money to do anything drastic to it any time soon, but it just gets so overgrown with weeds, long grasses, strange plants, etc. I have been doing a few hours digging up weeds and pulling them all out, but I know within weeks they'll all be back. I don't really want to use weed killer because there are fruit plants in my garden as there is in my next door neighbour's garden. Is there anything I can do stop weeds coming back so quickly and making the garden look a mess? Thanks for any advice.

Public Comments

1. You can buy a roll of weed suppressant material. Dig the ground over & remove what you can then lay the material over the soil - dig it in at the edges so it doesn't flap. You can cover it with bark, stones, gravel etc. to make it look prettier and put pots on it with some annuals in - something pretty & easy to look after.
2. The thing about weeds is when you pull them out, they re-germinate. (I found this out the hard way!) If you have the time to wait, you can do what I am doing now. It is an older method of prepping. I laid down cardboard over the weeds, wet it down real good, threw about 4 inches of grass clippings over it, and wet it down again. According to the book I have, it takes about 3 weeks worth of waiting, but then you can plant right through the cardboard. Try going to www.hgtv.com or www.bhg.com and finding what plants do well in your area. They have garden design plans that are a big help. Plant tall in the back, medium growth in the middle and low growing in the front, to maximize your space. Perennials work great, or use annuals as your low growing plants in the front. The trick to keeping the weeds out after planting is to mulch, mulch, mulch.
3. mike, I use newspaper to cover the areas I've weeded and cleared. If or when I wish to plant in covered areas, I punch a hole in the newspaper and set the plant or deposit the seeds. I used to use black plastic, but it heated the ground too much for my vegetables (I live in a hot summer area). The newspaper is also biodegradable, so it will eventually decompose and is good for the soil. After I lay it down, I water it to keep it from blowing away. You can place some weight at he corners to keep it in place. It will eventually lay according to the contour of the ground. You can even toss lose and sparse soil over the paper (just to camouflage the paper a bit). Just don't put a thick layer of soil on top or weeds will sprout in it. good luck
4. gardening never finishes, it's on going, i actually like the weeding part because i can look and see what i've achieved and then it's a matter of keeping up with the hoe so it's not so bad once the initial weedings done and if you fill in with hardy perennials they will increase every year with less room for the weeds to grow. your wild garden sounds idyllic to me