OK someone explain the hoeing thing to me please?

[MyNameIsInigoMontoya]

I admit I am a bit clueless about gardening, but everything I have read seems to say you should hoe to prevent weeds.

But - maybe it's just me, or just my garden (both my gardens so far have been inherited from other people, so I don't really know what they planted where) but I can't figure out how you can know you are hoeing up weed seedlings but not actual plants that you might want?

We just have stuff that grows up all over the place and even after giving it a year I am still not sure what some of the things are and if they are meant to be there or not, especially when they are still at the 1cm-stem-and-two-teeny-leaves stage. So how do I go about hoeing without wiping out any actual flowers?

It doesn't help that everything is a bit overgrown too, so there are not always neat patches of bare soil between the plants, I need to sort that out too if I ever get a chance.... it doesn't seem to stop the weeds though unfortunately, they seem quite happy to grow right up through the middle of the other plants (which makes them even harder to get rid of!).

[vintageteacups]

If you've been there a year, then if they were planted the year before, they would be proper decent sized plants this year.

Therefore, I think it's safe to say they are weeds or tiny plants such as aqualegia that have self seeded.

So I think you can safely hoe-away to your hearts content.

If they are bigger, foxgloves for example, you'd know they were supposed to be there and not weeds.

Even dandelions were originally grown in france as prized specimens; a weed is just a flower in the wrong place.

[MyNameIsInigoMontoya]

Oh, I thought some things died down in Winter and then came back small - or do they come back bigger straight away once they're a few years old?

Thinking about it, I suppose the geraniums and poppies and things have been fairly obvious when they came back up, so that does make sense.

DH laughs at me for getting annoyed at dandelions but my pet hate at the moment is what we always called stickybud (cleavers I think). Well, that and the ivy and periwinkles that are invading - the periwinkles are reasonably pretty I suppose, but are strangling everything else!

[vintageteacups]

I don't think they'd die down that much anbd then come back as 1 cm shoots with no other growth around. Well, mine don't anyway.

however, I'm no garden expert so maybe wait for someone else's superior knowledge before hacking with the hoe