So close, but not quite

Presented with a perfectly sunny Saturday, I couldn't put off the dreaded task of mattocking up the cursed runner-weed. It took me the whole morning to dig it up and remove, leaving me with uneven upturned clay, but I figured it shouldn't be too much of an issue once I give it the gypsum-cardboard-mulch treatment. 

This is how it looked at the end of the day:

I ran out of cardboard and I only have two buckets of mulch left, which clearly isn't going to finish this area off. So I was left at a natural stand-still. 

It's also left me with a slight dilemma. I can only afford one load of either soil or mulch next month. I was originally going to get soil, because I'm keen to get the garden beds ready for spring planting. But without more cardboard or newspapers, I can't properly prepare for garden beds to put the soil into. 

Whilst I need more cardboard for the mulch areas, I don't need as much as I do for the garden beds. I also need less mulch than I do soil, so technically it would be cheaper to finish mulching than starting garden beds (even though the mulch company charges nearly twice as much for delivery as the soil company).

So I have to decide what I want to achieve most next month. I'm sure I'll post something in the next couple of weeks that'll make it clear what I end up choosing.