Bindweed. How do you deal with it? I'm a digger, I'll dig to China to get that evil stuff out of my gardens. I don't have it here, but I have dealt with it elsewhere. I once dug a trench following roots for over 30 yards/25 meters.
I eventually got rid of the bindweed in my garden. It wasn't easy but here's what I did. I cut the bindweed but left around two or three inches of each newly snipped shoot sticking out of the ground. I then cut the bottom out of a plastic coke or lemonade bottle (supplied by my kids, neighbours etc) and placed one over each shoot. At one stage I had around twenty bottles 'decorating' my garden. I removed the cap from the bottles and sprayed weed killer directly into each one. I then closed the tops up again and allowed the sunlight to do its work. The shoots shrivelled and died as they were roasted and attacked by the weedkiller together. I had to repeat this process each year for around four years. Gradually the amount of bindweed grew less and less until last year there were no more shoots at all. Maybe someone has a better idea but I found that this worked for me. Digging the bindweed up always seemed to leave bits in the ground that would regrow the next year. Even the tiniest piece of root would take off and sprout which was extremely frustrating. I hope you can rid your garden of this invasive weed. Good luck!!
I have gotten rid of it, but it reseeds from the neighbors and the birds. I read this and it really did work on one side of the yard where we didn't have any bind weed for about five years. This works well for the Himalayan blackberries also (although I think they are easier to just dig them out). The trick is all in the timing. Use the Round-up or strong weed killer in the late summer/early fall just before it gets ready to die back. Something about it taking all the resources into the roots at that time. It sucks up the poison and kills itself fast. One dose on the leaves with the right timing works! The hard part is the timing and letting the bindweed cover other plants so you aren't spraying them with weed-killer. The article I read said that spraying weed-killer wasn't as effective at other times because all its energy was going into creating vines not storing energy up into its roots. Eileen I admire your hard work. Congratulations on successfully getting rid of the stuff! Not an easy task for sure.
I had all kinds of problems with it in my flower garden that I removed out back. Luckily, it has not spread to my other garden areas. I did not transplant anything from this flower garden in fear of transplanting the weed to another area. Since converting it to a vegetable garden, it's been easy to scrape them off with a hoe at ground level starving them to death hopefully. I have much less this year.
gosh i hate this one... i always just pull the plants up. not the best solution and it doesn;t help much. i guess i'll have to be a bit more aggressive.
I dig and pull as much as I can. This stuff is terrible, you have my deepest sympathy on this!!! I think this and using 2-4,D/round up is the only solution, really. We have this in a couple of places and try to control it as much as possible. The birds are the biggest spreader of the stuff, so if you can keep the flowers off, the birds wont have as much to spread.
I have had success burying a jar in the ground and filling it with a roundup solution. Then stick the end of a long vine in the jar and let it soak up the roundup. This works better than spraying and keeps it off your other plants. However, I wouldn't do this if there are children nearby that could get into it. Maybe build a wire cage to go around it if there are children in the area? One person I know didn't grow anything for a year where the bindweed was and attacked it with roundup. Of course you lose your garden for a year, for me this is not an option.
Late this summer/early fall about 1/4th of my backyard will undergo the wrath of round-up and a covering of black plastic. It's an area that I have not been able to get under control for cultivating in anyway because of the bindweed, peach tree and hackberry tree saplings and run-amouk raspberry vines. I figure cutting things down, spraying, covering and mulching will be a lot easier on me than continuing to attack each offender individually and since I can't use that part of the yard because of them, I really won't miss it for a year or two.
I must lead a sheltered life, gardening in the shade. From everyones distain this bane of gardeners worldwide is not a desired garden resident. The plant seems to quest for world domination. My garden is and will continue to be a bastion free of bindweed. Vigilence does have its rewards. Jerry
Jerry it is the bane of any farmers field, thus known as bind weed, it wraps around the equipment, such as PTO's and hay cutting equipment, and has to be manually cut off the machines before they can continue on in the field. You are very fortunate to not have to deal with it.
My next door neighbor has bindweed in his garden!,..of course it has started peeking through from his area,..nothing coming through from any other direction,..so i have had to have words with him,..he thought it was a flower!!!!!,..however it has remained out of my garden,.. so far!,..but its a battle killing signs of it as it looks for more ground to spoil,..its a chore every day,..search for bindweed,..and exterminate!!
Bind weed Our garden is jam full with Bind weed, but I refuse to use any Roundup or any pesticide. I am strictly organic. We dig it out, lay a weed barrier down, then just keep pulling it and as another gardener said, hoe it off at ground level. It does require hard work, but until I'm too old and weak to fight, I will conquer the annoying Bind weed.
