Bindweed

car25

Is there any way I can get rid of bindweed or at least control it, or will it just be easier to move house!!

alanobrien

car25 wrote:

Is there any way I can get rid of bindweed or at least control it, or will it just be easier to move house!!

Its horrendous stuff, i pull it out by the armful and then nuke the roots with sodium chlorate which holds it back for a short while. Trouble is it grows in and around everything else so its difficult to cull without bumping of "good" plants.

alanobrien

Just found this which may be of help

http://www.gardenadvice.co.uk/guides/difficult-weeds.pdf

never_enough

I hate using chemicals uneccessarily, especially as I have lots of wildlife in my garden, but bindweed does need them. Only way I managed to get around it is to take out all the plants I want to keep from that area & keep them in pots until I knew no bindweed was going to sprout up with them. Dug out everything else other than the bindweed from the problem area & zapped it with a good rootkilling weedkiller like glysophate. It took me over a year before I moved plants back. It comes through from my neighbour (not a keen gardener!) so I keep a 2 foot bare zone & just spray anything that pops up. It's pretty soul destroying to come back all relaxed & happy from a holiday to find it's taking over again!

tawnyowls

alanobrien wrote:

Its horrendous stuff, i pull it out by the armful and then nuke the roots with sodium chlorate which holds it back for a short while. Trouble is it grows in and around everything else so its difficult to cull without bumping of "good" plants.

The advice given on Gardener's World is to stick a long cane into the ground next to it, and encourage it to grow up that, away from any plants you want to keep. Once it's wound up the cane, make up a solution of glyphosate in a basin, put on a rubber glove, and on top of that put on a cheap cloth gardening glove. Then stick your hand in the basin of weedkiller, squeeze your hand to wring out the glove, and grasp the bindweed. Move from top to bottom of the cane, squeezing as you go, and rewetting the glove if necessary.

Otherwise, it's the long hard slog of yanking the stuff up every time you see it - you will kill it eventually, but eventually is the operative word!

SnowyOwl_2

My last garden was totally infested with bindweed. What a nightmare... I did the double gloved weedkiller application process which killed it off for a while, but it just came back again since it was in my neighbour's [STRIKE]jungle[/STRIKE] garden. In the end I made do with accepting I would never get rid of it, but managing it. I tried to dig up as many roots as I could, and rip as much stem away if I couldn't get to the root. It was OK, far from perfect, but keeping on top of it this way meant I controlled it rather than it controlling my garden.

alanobrien

tawnyowls wrote:

The advice given on Gardener's World is to stick a long cane into the ground next to it, and encourage it to grow up that, away from any plants you want to keep. Once it's wound up the cane, make up a solution of glyphosate in a basin, put on a rubber glove, and on top of that put on a cheap cloth gardening glove. Then stick your hand in the basin of weedkiller, squeeze your hand to wring out the glove, and grasp the bindweed. Move from top to bottom of the cane, squeezing as you go, and rewetting the glove if necessary.

Otherwise, it's the long hard slog of yanking the stuff up every time you see it - you will kill it eventually, but eventually is the operative word!

Sounds like a good solution if its accessible.

Unfortunately not an easy approach when its growing and spreading between the back of a hedge and the fence :eek:

I will give the roundup approach a go and see what that does. I loathe using weedkillers but sometimes as Tichy Almarsh says you just have to

car25

Thanks, will try the above, trouble is it is inter-twined in all my plants (think I left it too long) and creeping through the paving slabs and along the wall. Is bindweed something that will die off in the autumn/winter anyway?

I can't remember the bindweed being here when we moved in or for a couple of years after that - how does it start (sorry for ignorance here).

I'm obviously really unlucky - last place I moved from I had Japanese Knotweed in the garden (creeping under the fence from someone elses garden)!

tawnyowls

Yes, it does die off, so if you make sure it doesn't flower (and thus set seed) this year, you could park a couple of canes there ready for next year and nab it as it comes out.

As for starting, bird could have pooped out a seed, animal picked it up, might have come in from a neighbouring garden - anything really.

car25

Thanks Tawnyowls, it is already flowering, should I pull all the flowers off or is it too late?

Let me get this right then, next spring when it starts coming through, shove some stakes in the ground, "train" it up the stakes then treat with glove/weedkiller, will this kill it back to the root then and should I then pull it out when it is dead, and presumably I should not pull out any live shoots as the roots will still be in place and it will shoot again?

Thanks

Lord_Gardener

Ah, 'Hell weed' as it's also known as! Best approach is to dig out as much as possible of this perenial plant which has a creeping root system. Train up regrowth onto canes then treat as Tawnyowls said with a systemic herbicide. Crush Bindweed to help take up herbicde and use a sponge to apply. Remove or snip through flowering stems to prevent seed maturation. I suspect that this will be an ongoing task! NB a well forked soil will make it much easier to remove complete roots -same for gound elder!