I class myself as always following organic "rules" - and I do aim to do so.
But when I and a friend first got our plot in April, we used treated timber to edge our first 2 beds - without realising this is a no-no. We are not so fanatical as to replace the boards, but will use untreated wood in future - preferably free recycled wood to keep the cost down.
I do agree that it is a constant learning curve, this organic gardening stuff, but I'm keen to try the approach of looking after the soil and working with nature. We managed to get veg this summer - potatoes, broad beans, french beans, peas, runner beans, salad leaf, spinach, sweetcorn, chard, carrots, beetroot, leeks, onions, courgettes and fennel - although in small quantities - and about 12 strawberries! They did taste gorgeous though - hopefully we will have a few more next year.
Our plot was overgrown with all sorts of weeds - bindweed, dock, nettles, dandelions, marestail, brambles etc., But in April we double dug two new 1 by 4.2m beds to uproot as much as we could - including bits of metal and burnt wood! We then planted in squares (roughly 50cm by 50cm) rather than rows and did our best to kept on top of the weeding amongst our plants.
We covered most of the the rest of the plot to keep the weeds down elsewhere. Local supermarkets have been happy to give us waste cardboard and we inherited some tarpaulin and weed suppressing membrane. Lots of bricks and stones keep the covers in place and we have found, when digging more beds this autumn, that the green weedstuff has gone, but we do still need to dig out the roots of all those pesky perennial weeds. We know we won't get them all, but can weed and mulch once the beds are in place - and hopefully win the battle.
Having said all this, we did get potato and tomato blight - didn't get a single tomato - and the slugs had a field day on our courgettes. We just tell ourselves that we are still learning - and we won't always win.
In case anyone is wondering about the width of our beds, we are both short women - not much more than 5ft each - and as the plan is to have raised beds and paths so that the soil does not get walked on, we plumped for 1m beds rather then the recommended 1.2m.
We did read up a fair bit before and since April - our local library has been fantastic. The three best books, as far as I'm concerned, were "The Half-Hour Allotment", "Square Foot Gardening" and "Organic Gardening. The No-Dig Way"