Weeding

I have avoided weeding for a long time, but I'm beginning to grow annual vegetables, so I need to start doing it.
I dislike weeding. At one time I couldn't bear to kill the little weedies, but that's no longer the issue. I just am not good at it. It seems for every weed I pull I remove one of the seedlings I planted. And since the weeds are endless but the seedlings numbered I soon will have nothing left to weed but weeds themselves.
The weeds in my garden are largely bulb-forming plants. These are hard to remove. I pull them and they break off and just come back the next day. I pull really carefully, on days when the soil is exactly damp enough, and get a few of the bulbs out. But not enough. Crocosmia is pretty easy, I get probably one in two or even better. A quarter to a third of the three-cornered leeks. Maybe about the same for cuckoo-pint. But sour grass? One in twenty, IF the soil has been turned recently. More usually one in fifty.
Demoralizing.
I plant my little seedy things in October when the rains are due soon. I water the surface and I watch them sprout. Cute little seed leaves and soon real leaves and I can start recognizing them. Initially it looks hopeful. The bulby things are way under ground and dormant, and it takes a while for the rains to start and for the bulbs to notice it's damp and start growing and catch up.
But then I come out one morning and they're up. My seedlings are growing a few micrometers a day in the cool and damp of the autumn. But once the bulbs reach the surface - BOOM - they're growing inches overnight. Where are my cabbages? My micro beets? Hidden under a jungle of sour grass. And worse, I can't even pull these things effectively until they shade and hide my vegetable sprouts, because until they are big enough to get a good grip on them I have NO CHANCE of pulling them out by their roots. It's wasted effort, with the side effect of pulling out my baby broccoli that's tangled up with it. The results are as described above.
I know I should be sheet mulching with cardboard or newspaper and lots of nice organic matter above it, but the yard has a few native plants and I have high hopes that there are seeds in the soil of plants that I'd love to have, just waiting to appear. So in the hope that, as I take away the invasives that are crowding them, exciting native plants might emerge - as well as my fundamentally lazy attitude and utter conviction that until I am ready to establish something better I may as well leave the weeds - I leave most of my yard unmulched; scattering seeds, tucking little plants into appealing corners, and waiting for succession to transform the yard. But even where I know I am planting vegetables and know I will be fighting the weeds, it is hard for me to think ahead. I get carried away by enthusiasm. When I see the rain is on its way I go out and plant seeds, totally forgetting about laying down an impervious layer of sheet mulch.
My yard has one of the world's foremost collections of well-established toxic volunteers. So few of the weeds here are edible that I had to give up my favorite Sunday breakfast, eggs and weeds. I barely have a dandelion to my name. (Though I have been planting them when I find seeds, and they are spreading. Hooray.) In addition to the aforementioned bulbiferous weeds, I have a yard full of poke, ivy, nightshade, and two varieties of spurge.
A few of the weeds here are edible, but still not desirable. Cleavers isn't exactly toxic, but it's problematic when it gets into my socks and my longhaired cat. Burr chervil is even stickerier. the greens are too small to eat, and it's so similar to a lot of toxic apiaceae that I'm uncomfortable harvesting it.
I am encouraging the plantain, but not the dock, with its tall seed stalks that bark my shins trying to trip me. Blackberries seldom ripen here and the few berries aren't worth the thorns sprouting up everywhere. I use a few nasturtium flowers, but I don't need them covering half my yard. Fortunately nasturtium is one of the easiest plants to pull out but it drops viable seeds everywhere. And I need no more plum, I already have a forest of them. They are coming up everywhere from many years of ungathered fruit.
The three cornered leeks are edible, but the texture of bulbs is coarse and mealy, and they need a lot of washing. I cook with them when I have pulled a good quantity, but if I am growing an onion for the table there are lots of others I enjoy more. If I'm growing them as part of the ecosystem, there are several really pretty and unusual California native wild onions I'd rather have.
Poke, though toxic, is eaten, but only if picked and prepared correctly. Generally one picks it in the spring as it emerges from dormancy. But here in California it never goes dormant, so that's not a useful rule. I'd like to work with someone who has picked and eaten it as a traditional food. If you google it you will find lots of warnings about how toxic it is, and how one must boil it in three changes of water before eating it. But I suspect that's just the interwebs quoting itself. The JL Hudson catalog, which I rather trust, has a sidebar saying that anyone who insists you boil poke ought to be forced to boil their asparagus. But still, I'd feel better if I had someone show me exactly what to pick, and eat it with me the first time.