Hand weeding tool and elbow grease for me.

Agree, get yourself a good hoe, pull out as many as possible and dig out the roots of the stubborn ones. It may take a while but the hard work will be worth it.

Yup totally agree with the comments above hard work and elbow grease - there is no quick and easy solution to getting rid of perennial weeds.

Correction. There is no quick and easy "organic" solution to perennial weeds .

However if you're prepared to use a weed killer once roundup will quickly kill almost all perennial weeds all the way down to the root.(certain weeds require 2-3 applications )

Then a quick weekly whip over the soil with a dutch hoe or three tined cultivator will stop weeds re-establishing.

it is important to hoe regularly as this makes light work in all but the heaviest soils and no weed will ever be more than a day or two old so the hoe will chop it off and it will disappear under the soil ...so no bending to pick them up which you'd have to do if the weeds were bigger.

If you have a very heavy soil you could cover it with a 2 inch deep layer of compost or light garden soil and then you will be hoeing through that rather through the heavy soil under it.

I did this for my 84 year old mum who lives 200 miles away from me and she can hoe her garden very easily now.(she refuses to get a gardener to do it)

If you want to spend hours on your hands and knees putting in elbow grease /hard work that's fine but there are other ways of doing it.

Once you've eliminated perennial weeds if you plant mainly evergreen ground spreading perennials to cover most of the soil you'll have very little work to do during the summer and a few hours cutting back in late autumn or early spring

My own garden is about 60 feet by 40 feet with a central lawn and is planted so that there is very little soil showing in the borders . I can hoe the small amount of soil showing in about 5 minutes a week and my lawn in surrounded with borders varying from 15 feet to 6 feet deep.

Using a long handled 3 tined cultivator

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31559373@N00/8105209540/in/photolist-dmejq5

Using a dutch hoe

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31559373@N00/8105824814/in/photolist-dmhtjf-dmf3dH-dmfjw7-dmejq5