Hi, my take is a little different. I do use soil barriers in some cases. They are very helpful for me in the right situation. For squashes, I lay black plastic and cut holes in it to plant the plants and water them. The black plastic warms the soil and greatly reduces the need for watering. I have also used it to create garden bed, roll it out i to the shape of the bed, lay it on the grass & weeds, weight down with bricks or logs, and just leave it for 5 months. Then I remove it and dig the soil. Soil flora was very active under the plastic - moles dug it and mixed it so fine, I had no trouble turning it by hand. This plastic was in place about four months. After pulling it up in May. All of my squashes last year were grown using black plastic. This was half of my squash harvest Sept 2021 For sauce tomatoes, the plants sprawl all over the place. Soil contact and water splashing gives them leaf diseases and they die. I laid brown paper sheets, cut from paper grocery bags, to cover the ground for the entire tomato bed, again leaving holes for the plants and watering. I got a great crop, no weeding needed other than the rare stray weed, and no tomato disease. Watering was minimal despite a hot dry summer. At end of season, I composted the paper. Paper only lasts one season as a mulch. Covered with wood chips, only a few months. For this year, I bought a big roll of brown craft paper to mulch more crops. I think it does a great job. There is enough porosity and looseness to allow air exchange. The soil under it was full of earthworms. I take that as a sign of soil health. In time of water shortage, the mulch will reduce our water use. Ask ten gardeners and get twenty answers For hoeing, I would look into a stirrup hoe. you use it sort of like shaving, slide it back and forth barely under the soil surface. Keep it sharp using a rasp. It takes about 20 min to hoe my sweetcorn, an area about 10 by 30 feet. Doing it after a rain when The soil is soft, is easier. You might want to think about raised beds, too, while you are able. Raising the ground level is more ergonomic. It also placed a barrier for weeds. If you are not crazy about flowers, you can grow colorful vegetables - Swiss chard can be brilliant, there are interesting leaf textures for sage, oregano, chives (with nice flowers too), dill etc. There are super-dwarf tomato plants if you can find them, very colorful, and varieties of chili peppers that are compact and have brilliant red, orange, yellow peppers. Sorry if wrote too much
