At the moment, it looks like my eventual solution to the weeding problem will be to try to keep my beds under a near permanent mulch rather than spacing the plants far enough apart that they can be hoed.  But Solomon is very anti-mulch --- disturbing since he's been spot on about so many other things.  Maybe mulching isn't such a good idea after all?

Solomon lists half a dozen disadvantages of permanent mulching.  His biggest gripe is the "plague levels of small animals" that move into the mulch if you don't live in a cold enough climate.  I assume he's talking about moles and voles and shrews here, and I feel extraordinarily lucky that Lucy is a small animal killer and doesn't let any of these survive in our garden.

Solomon's other arguments against mulch don't carry as much weight with me.  He notes that if you use hay, you end up with a lot of weeds --- so don't use hay.  If your summers aren't hot enough or if your mulch is too woody, it won't rot into the bed before summer and will tangle with your hoe --- but you shouldn't need to hoe much if your bed is well mulched.  Mulched garden soil is slower to warm up in the spring than bare earth --- so rake the mulch off a few weeks before you need to plant your earliest crops.  He thinks that adding too much compost or mulch to your soil will result in soil nutrients out of balance, which will make your food less nutritious --- so use dynamic accumulators to reachieve that balance.

Proponents of mulch argue that the practice conserves water, but Solomon makes the legitimate point that most water lost from the soil comes out of plant leaves, not from bare soil.  He points out that mulching only keeps the soil surface moist and doesn't reduce overall moisture loss.  On the other hand, I would argue that mulching does prevent soil crusts from forming (something that Solomon considers a big problem in his garden) and allows more water to soak in rather than running off in clay soil.  I suspect that overall, mulch results in a net gain of moisture for the plants in our garden.

So far, our experiments with mulch over the last year have been highly successful, but I'll keep all of Solomon's arguments in mind and will be willing to give up on mulching if I start to see major disadvantages.