Bindweed

Mrs_pbradley936

A garden centre told me that certain weed killers were no longer available due to EC rules and regs. I wanted something called "Clover kill" but now they are not allowed to sell strong weed killer to the public - just farmers and nurserymen.

tawnyowls

car25 wrote:

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

No, it's not too late - take them all off and and as you're doing it, just look at the plant to see if you can spot any seed pods (sort of green and bulging) and take them off too. Obviously, this will encourage yet more flowers to form, as the plant's reason for living is to make seed, but persevere.

Yes, if you use Round-up or other glyphosate weedkiller, it's a systemic weedkiller so it'll travel down the plant (hence the squeezing to bruise the leaves and make it take up more) into the roots and kill the plant, but it's neutralised by soil, so won't damage other plants unless it drips on them. (If you have an area such as paving where there aren't any other plants in danger, a tougher weedkiller such as Pathclear could be used - this will stay around for a couple of seasons and keep it at bay.) It's actually better to leave it to die down itself - if you pull it out when you think it's dead (i.e. when the top growth has died down), the roots may not have got enough WK and will still be alive. Once it has died back, a check every week should let you use something like a weed stick, which looks like a giant tube of Pritt-Stick, but contains WK, and you just dab this on the leaves when you spot them; easier and safer than a liquid WK.

pbradley936 wrote:

A garden centre told me that certain weed killers were no longer available due to EC rules and regs. I wanted something called "Clover kill" but now they are not allowed to sell strong weed killer to the public - just farmers and nurserymen.

Yes, that's correct. Clover kill has been banned quite a while - been banned in Australia and the States too, I think.

Don'tskipit

Lord_Gardener wrote:

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!

Agree with you m'lord!!! (In the same trade as me I suspect)
I've had problems in my own garden with bindweed for years - garden backs onto railway, and the blasted roots keep coming through from there.
Need to repeat LG's advice - especially crushing leaves before you treat - every time you see new regrowth.
Best of luck!