In amongst the thatch on the various carexes were mounds of seedlings - purple linaria, false angelica, parsley. The absolute worst was a micro-leafed vetch.

Question: does anyone have a really good method for removing them - and the thatch - which doesn't lead to scored fingers from the juvenile cutty grasses also lurking in the thatch???

As for the weeds, would one of those wire weeders help? I don't know what they are called, but they're basically a wire hook with a handle attached. The hook would loosen up the weeds without disturbing the carexs too much. Although I don't worry about being gentle with ours - they get hacked back to within an inch of their lives when I get fed up with them trailing onto the lawn and the cat rips the living daylights out of them on a daily basis, and there they are, still growing away...tough damn things!