Does anyone have strategies for minimising this arduous task in a veg plot?

I've spent half the afternoon bent double pulling up weeds and grass from
between my spring greens and my back is killing me!

How do others cope with weeds?

Suggestions anyone for a weed free veg plot - or at least how to minimise
the work getting rid of them?

I don't know whether to go for wide rows so I can easily get between to weed
or narrow rows so there is no room for weeds to compete?

I own every type of hoe available to mankind and personally find the Dutch
hoe best provided the weeds are small. On the down side I tend to slip
sometimes and whoops there goes another veggie to the great compost heap in
the sky. It is virtually impossible to hoe right up to plants and this seems
to be where dandelions sneak in.

Why do weeds grow ten times faster than vegetables?

Often time is a problem, or rather the lack of it, and weed seedlings have
raced a foot high and beyond hoeing so it is the back breaking job of trying
to pull them up. Unfortunately lots have long tap roots and just snap off. A
few weeks later they are back but with five stems instead of one.

Last year I made a terrible mistake of rotorvating lots of fresh lawn
clippings straight into part of the veg plot that has heavy clay soil. It
seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately this part of the veg plot
has now become a lawn too! I don't know what variety of grass it was but the
clippings have rooted!

Another mistake was allowing some weeds run to seed, and that part of the
veg plot is plagued with a carpet of weed seedlings this year. Even after
rotorvating them several times, after a little rain a fresh dense carpet of
weeds seedlings pop up. Lesson learned!

Norman Digger.