I now have my 3rd garden and I'm badly in need of advice re weeds/borders!

[forcryinoutloud]

Garden 1 - attempted to do some nice planting but soon had 2 young children who started to play in garden, kick footballs, squash plants so not much gardening done...

Garden 2 - Still two youngish children, garden HUGE and just didn't have the time to keep it under control.

Garden 3 - much smaller and plain, just had borders dug over and weeded.
QUESTION, do I leave it alone ie the soil in big clumps or do I go out with the hoe regularly and chop up soil and tart it up? Will chopping up soil and disturbing it make weeds more likely to grow? I am hoping to plant next Spring and I really want to be able to do some gardening now my kids are nearly grown up. Please advise, thank you.

I did something similar last year. I left the big clumps until the first frost, hoping the cold would kill off any nasties! Then about every month I turned the soil again, removing any weeds or roots that had come to the surface. In the spring I began to condition the soil with manure and compost. I bought bags of anything that was cheap or on offer. After the frost was over I began my planting plan.
The richness of the soil has meant that everything has settled in well and put on new growth. Some of the annuals were huge!
Not always an advantage!

Do you have any perennial weeds - bindweed, dandelions, brambles? They need digging out over and over again!

In your shoes I’d mulch with something nutritious and then dig it in in the spring. Perhaps a green manure?

Long term, I’ve been using this stuff as a semi-permanent mulch on my perennial beds and it’s working really well at keeping weeds down, plus it looks nice too.

Thank you both for the great advice

You are likely to get lots of annual weed having cultivated the ground. If you can leave the ground unplanted use a hoe to knock down any germinating weed seed. If you are persistent you will beat them. If you can't wait and the borders are planted I would disturb the soil as little as possible and hand pull (with the help of a hand fork ) any weed that emerges.

It helps to identify the weeds you have. Ephemeral/annual weeds can be hoe'd. Perennial weeds must be dug up.

Good luck!