My garden is all in raised beds. That will help some with the weeds.
Last year, I had the absolutely cleanest beds I’ve ever had! We have a lot of large, mature (80-90 yo) pine trees & in the fall, there are lots of pine needles on the ground. The last 2 years, I have started raking them up & putting them in large trash bags (30 gallon), then storing them in our pole barn out of the rain. I also dumped a couple of utility trailer loads in the walkways between my raised beds & just pitchforked them straight onto the beds as mulch in the spring.
So in some of the beds (tomato in particular), I work the soil, put in any fertilizer I’m using, plant my tomatoes, then put down cardboard from boxes I’ve saved & cover with a thick layer of pine needles. No weeds .... maybe a stray one right around the stems where the mulch (box/needles) doesn’t cover. When I remove the pine needles in the fall to clean up the bed, the cardboard is almost gone & there are plenty of earthworms under what cardboard is remaining.
If you don’t want to use cardboard, but still have access to pine needles, I found that mulching with them between my rows of zinnias kept the weeds down considerably - also used in my herb bed. Since the needles don’t decompose very much, I don’t seem to have a problem with them making the beds ‘acidic’ (which someone else was worried about).
In the fall, when I take the old pine mulch off the beds, I put it in the walkways between the beds .... those walkways are a lot more weed-free than where there are no needles.
We don’t try to live off of our garden but in season and with a little local farmer’s market produce that is what we mostly end up eating. The garden is now about 40 x 60. I’ve had much larger and used the Extension Service planting guide but it turns out to be enough to feed an army or keep us canning and freezing through mid-July if we plant according to the time guide. This year it was too wet and cool so we ended up planting late and all of it on just about one day, never a really good plan.
I’m wondering how many square feet of raised beds you use? I am thinking of about 250 square feet 16” high using concrete blocks. My arrangement would be a total of 64” wide with 48” useful and 16’ long consisting of four beds plus a concrete block compost pit that I can reach with the tractor.
I too have pine trees but not so old and am concerned about acidity which I fight beneath them.
Not all zone 7s are equal of course. It only speaks to the temperatures. We get plenty of rain through the year most times but it is in groups of bunches in the growing season.